Karzai leads

With just 10 percent of all ballots counted, Afghan presidential candidate and current President Hamid Karzai received 40.6 percent of votes, while has main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah has 38.7 percent.

These are first official figures released by Afghanistan's independent election commission from last Thursday's presidential election. The commission and plans to make public partial results each day over the next several days.

"From the total 524,444 valid votes, Hamid Karzai received 212,927 and Abdullah Abdullah received 202,889 votes," a spokesman for the Independent Election Commission (IEC) told a news conference.

The commission intends to make public final and certified results in mid- or late-September.

Millions of Afghans voted at thousands of polling booths to elect a president to lead a nation plagued by armed insurgency, drugs and corruption eight years after the U.S. invasion.

Too early to call

It is way too early to call a winner in the poll, said Richard Holbrooke, Washington's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"You don't call it with 10 percent ... it's too early to call," Holbrooke said.

International observers have hailed the poll as a success, although the commission has registered 790 claims of fraud across the country. These include missing ballot papers, irregularities in voter registration as well as threats and intimidation by the Taliban.

The United Nations on Monday urged candidates, supporters and voters across the country to stay calm while the commission counts the votes and investigates fraud allegations. Fifty-four allegations have been given "high priority" and are considered serious enough to potentially affect the outcome of the election, the commission said.

Thirty other people ran in the election. A candidate must achieve a majority of the votes to win outright in the first round of voting. Otherwise, a runoff is planned at the beginning of October.

wl/AP/AFP/Reuters/dpa
Editor: Trinity Hartman