A roadside bomb killed two Afghan election workers and one policeman and destroyed dozens of ballot papers yesterday, police and an election official said, the day after an election that ended without any major violence despite Taliban threats.

Around 60 per cent of eligible Afghan voters cast their ballots across the country in a presidential vote hailed as a success by Afghan and Western officials.

Although the Taliban failed to pull off major attacks on election day itself, some fear insurgents are preparing to disrupt the ballot-counting process which is due to take weeks in a country with basic infrastructure and a rugged terrain.

In the first such attack since polling closed on Saturday night, a bomb hit a car carrying election staff and ballot papers in Khanabad district of the northern Kunduz province, police said.

“The car carrying ballot papers from four polling stations was hit and all the materials were burnt,” Amza Ahmadzai, an election official in Kunduz, told Reuters, adding that two staff and one policeman were killed.

The car carrying ballot papers from four polling stations was hit, all materials were burnt

The Taliban have condemned the election – designed to be Afghanistan’s first democratic handover of power – as a US backed sham. The incumbent, Hamid Karzai, is barred by the Constitution from running again after 12 years in power.

There is no clear frontrunner but the three main candidates are former foreign ministers Abdullah Abdullah and Zalmay Rassoul, and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani.

The election came at a crucial time as most foreign troops prepare to go home after fighting the Taliban insurgency for more than a decade.

The bigger-than-expected turnout in Afghanistan’s presidential election and the Taliban’s failure to derail the vote has raised questions about the capacity of the insurgents to tip the country back into chaos as foreign troops head home.

The Taliban claimed that they staged more than 1,000 attacks and killed dozens during Saturday’s election, which they have branded a US-backed deception of the Afghan people, though security officials said it was a gross exaggeration. There were dozens of minor roadside bombs, and attacks on polling stations, police and voters during the day. But the overall level of violence was much lower than the Taliban had threatened to unleash on the country.

“This is how people vote to say death to the Taliban,” said one Afghan on Twitter, posting a photograph that showed his friends holding up one finger – stained with ink to show they had voted – in a gesture of defiance.