Meantime, balloting hours were extended -- some into Sunday -- at many polling stations across the country after technical glitches and lack of staff delayed operations, leading to long lines, the country's Independent Electoral Commission, or IEC, said.
The elections already had been delayed for three years because of security concerns, and the assassination Thursday by the Taliban of an important provincial police chief only added to many Afghans' sense of unease as they turned out to cast their ballots.
An explosion in Kabul killed a child as voting was underway, said Italian-run non-governmental organization EMERGENCY, adding that its staff had received 36 patients needing treatment.
The deaths and injuries across the capital city were confirmed by Ministry of Public Health official Muhibullah Zaheer. The number of incidents and details of what happened weren't immediately available.
Much rests on the vote: Hundreds of women and young people are among candidates standing for election, riding a wave of hope that the notoriously corrupt and inefficient political system in Afghanistan can be overhauled.
After casting his ballot Saturday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani thanked law enforcement, election officials and citizens who made the election possible, "despite the risks involved."
"Today we proved together that we uphold democracy. With casting our ballots without fear we honor the sacrifices of the fallen," he tweeted.
The Taliban had warned Afghans ahead of the vote not to participate in what they called "an American project from start to finish."
It's not yet clear how logistical problems at many polling stations will affect turnout figures.
Voter enthusiasm may already have been chilled by the killing of Gen. Abdul Raziq Achakzai, Kandahar's police chief, the latest in a long line of violent attacks in the country. Two Americans also were wounded in the shooting attack.
Voting in Kandahar was delayed for a week following Raziq's death.
'This is a failed process'
Efforts were being made to resolve delays in the opening of some of the voting sites and centers due to technical issues, Shaima Alam Soroush, a deputy spokeswoman for the IEC, told reporters in Kabul.
A campaign manager, Israr Karimzai, told CNN that he had "20 reports of different centers across the country where people are being denied their right to vote" because "no ballot papers or no biometric devices or IEC staff have shown up" at the polling stations.
A candidate in Kabul told CNN she had been waiting for more than an hour to vote.
"This is a failed process," Mariam Solaimankhil said.
Idrees Stanikzai, also in Kabul, told CNN that voters were complaining about still waiting for their polling station to open more than two hours after their arrival.
The head of the provincial council in Maidan Wardak province, Sharifullah Hotak, told local Afghan TV station Shamshad that the biometric system in voting centers was not working in the whole of the province.
And in Herat, hundreds of people were standing in line as polling stations there also experienced technical issues.
More than 20,000 polling stations were open across the country, with the exception of Kandahar and Ghazni provinces, where voting will take place at a later date, Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said earlier.
Some 70,000 members of the Afghan forces have been deployed to ensure the security of the elections, he said.
Women and young people stand for election
The risks have not deterred more than 2,500 candidates nationwide, including more than 400 women, to run for 250 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan parliament.
Maryam Samaa, a 26-year-old former journalist and news presenter on the nation's largest private broadcaster, TOLO TV, felt a duty to stand, she told CNN. She is running for one of Kabul's 33 parliamentary seats.
"It's a responsibility every human being must take on," she said. "Everyone has to question the society around them: Why is there so much inequity, and what is my role in reforming that society?"
Like many other young candidates, Samaa said she decided to run because there are few "actual representatives of the people" in the current parliament. Rather than the house of the people, Samaa said, the parliament has become a home for competing "mafia networks."
Only 9.6% of respondents were satisfied with the work of the current parliament, a survey conducted this year by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies, an independent research institute based in Kabul, found.
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