Pakistan voted on Wednesday in a historic general election that was as bitter, heated and bloody as expected following weeks of acrimonious campaigning.

Amid claims of vote rigging, election officials insisted there was “no conspiracy” although technical failures meant that the result would be delayed until late Thursday morning.

Earlier in the city of Quetta near the Afghanistan border, a suicide bomber drove a motorbike into a crowd of people near a polling station. Witnesses told The Independent the target appeared to be a police van, and there were at least five security officers among the 31 dead.

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