Abdullah ahead in partial Afghan vote results

KABUL: New partial results in Afghanistan's presidential election released Sunday show candidate Abdullah Abdullah is still the front-runner, though a runoff election looks likely.

The winner will replace Hamid Karzai, the only president the country has known since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban, and will oversee a tumultuous period during which the US and Nato forces are expected to withdraw most of their troops from the country.

Both Abdullah, and his closest competitor, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, have promised a fresh start with the West and have vowed to sign a security pact with the US that Karzai refused to sign.

The chairman of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani, announced the results Sunday.

They represent about half of the estimated 7 million ballots cast in the April 5 poll, though varying levels of votes have been counted in the country's 54 provinces.

Abdullah, Karzai's top rival in the country's last election, has 44 per cent of the vote tallied. Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank official, received 33.2 per cent of the vote.