Both Karzai and Abdullah claim victory

Hamid Karzai's campaign chief says that the incumbent president has secured the outright majority in Afghanistan's presidential elections, but his main rival rejects the claim.

Din Mohammad said initial results showed the incumbent president had gotten a majority of the votes.

"Initial results show that the president has got a majority. We will not go to a second round. We have got a majority."

He emphasized that Karzai had secured the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off in October.

A spokesman for Karzai's main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has meanwhile dismissed the remarks, saying Abdullah is leading the votes.

Abdullah the main challenger to incumbent president Hamid Karzai has issued a statement detailing about 40 incidents of alleged irregularities. Abduallh says officials have pressured people to vote for Karzai.

The claims and counter claims come as ballot papers are being counted after polling stations were closed in Afghanistan's presidential and provincial elections on late Thursday.

Meanwhile, election authorities have launched an investigation into several complaints of irregularities.

The election authority said Friday ballot counting in the country's presidential election was over. "The counting is finished for the presidential race."

The official results are expected to be released next week and turnout expected at 40 to 50 percent, according to election commission officials.

Observers, however, expect the number to be far lower. Many independent reports also suggested a slow start to voting.

The vote was held amid tight security due to threats from Taliban militants. But Afghan authorities say those threats failed to prevent people from turning up.

A number of people were killed on Thursday, including children in rocket attacks that reportedly hit the southern provinces of Kandahar, Ghazni and Helmand, the eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Khost, as well as in the north.

However, according to the latest official reports the Election Day saw sporadic violent incidents in which over 26 people were killed. The casualties included civilians, soldiers as well as Taliban insurgents.

The Afghan government had banned covering reports of violence during the voting.

There have been reports of militant attacks in 15 provinces.

The violence in the conflict-torn country is on the rise despite the presence of more than 100,000 US-led soldiers in Afghanistan.

'US military surge destabilizes Pakistan'

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi says the US' move to send 21,000 extra troops to war-ravaged Afghanistan could have serious implications for Pakistan.

"Pakistan has talked through political and military ways at all levels to the stakeholders that transferring the problem from Afghanistan to Pakistan will not help resolve the issue," Qureshi said at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart in Islamabad on Tuesday.

The Islamabad government is worried that the US President Barack Obama's move to boost its military presence in Afghanistan could further destabilize Pakistan by pushing more militants across the border.

Increased US military activity may also spark an influx of refugees from insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan into border areas of Pakistan.

The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 has prompted the Taliban militants to focus their attention across the border in Pakistan, turning the restive tribal belt between the two neighbors into the scene of deadly violence.

Qureshi also added that the US military surge in the war-conflict Afghanistan might also have implications for Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan.

Pakistan's Balochistan is already rocked by violence as Baloch rebel groups have for many years campaigned for greater autonomy and control of local resources.

Qureshi urged Washington to pursue non-military solutions to conflict in the troubled Pakistan and Afghanistan. "There should be a civilian surge to promote reconciliatory efforts in Afghanistan to resolve the issue".

Islamabad has repeatedly said that unwise White House policies were strengthening the Taliban and spreading extremism in the volatile region.

Violence in Pakistan has claimed the lives of thousands of people, including civilians and soldiers, since the country joined US-led 'war on terror'.

Obama invites Ahmadinejad to visit Nazi-era camp

US President Barack Obama has asked his Iranian counterpart, who says the Holocaust is a "big deception", to visit the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

"He should make his own visit," said President Obama who visited the site on Friday. "I have no patience for people who would deny history. And the history of the Holocaust is not something speculative."

Since taking office in 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched a campaign to make clear ambiguities about the Holocaust, while criticizing Israel for using the issue as an excuse for its existence.

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad reiterated his anti-Israel stance and called the Holocaust a "big deception." The Iranian president had earlier made similar comments about the historical event describing it as a "myth".

President Obama, meanwhile, noted that his great uncle helped liberate a camp of Buchenwald during World War II, Reuters reported.

The concentration camp in eastern Germany was created by the Nazis and an estimated 56,000 people are assumed to have been killed there.