Afghanistan has launched the registration of candidates for long-delayed parliamentary and district elections scheduled for this year.
Gula Jan Badi Sayad, head of the Independent Election Commission, said at a news conference on May 26 that registration would be open until June 12.
The elections are set to be held on October 20, more than three years after parliament's original five-year term ended in 2015.
Candidates are required to collect the signatures of at least 1,000 supporters to register.
The elections have been threatened by deadly attacks on voter-registration centers.
At least 60 people were killed in April when a suicide bomber attacked a voter-registration center in the capital, Kabul, and there have been a series of attacks on centers across the country.
Sayad said some 3.2 million people had registered to vote so far, still well short of the potential electorate of 14 million but exceeding predictions that the violence would stop the registration process entirely.