Kabul -- After another late night filing a story, I was still a bit groggy Thursday morning when my Afghan colleague, Hashim Shukoor, arrived at the guest house with an invite to the presidential palace.

The day before, the initial tally of votes from the presidential election had finally been completed amid all sorts of fraud allegations. Karzai was on top with 54.6 percent of the vote. He wanted to talk to the press.

We piled in the car and headed down some side streets to avoid the heaviest traffic and finally arrived at a guard station that marked the approach to the palace compound. We got out and walked down a stretch of road fortified with blast barriers and bordered by walls topped with barbed wire.

We hit another security point, where I laid out my camera and tape-recorder to be checked by bomb-sniffing dogs. Then there was another search area, where I was allowed to keep all of my gear except my cell phone and ballpoint pens.

Finally, I was able to enter the palace compound, where we headed down a stone walkway lined with pink and yellow roses. We eventually entered a large central courtyard with fountains, more flowers and pine trees.

Construction of the compound began in the late 19th century by King Abdul Rahman Khan. Then, as now, there were plenty of threats to those who sought to rule Afghanistan. This palace was built with thick ramparts and a moat to help ward off intruders.

The longest resident of the palace compound was King Zahir Shah, who ruled for some 40 relatively peaceful years until he was ousted in 1973. He still managed to live past his 90th birthday.

Other rulers have met untimely ends, such as Najibullah, the president deposed by the Taliban in 1992. He took refuge in a United Nations compound, but was eventually tortured and hung above a traffic circle.

On most days, the cavernous buildings and gardens of the 83-acre compound form the boundaries of Karzai's world. He moves outside the fortress infrequently and only with great security, as there have been several assassination attempts.

Like many politicians in Afghanistan, Karzai has a complicated past that reflects shifting alliances. A Pashtun from the southern part of the country, he was a supporter in the early 1990s of the Taliban, who also have their base in that part of the country. But Karzai later became disillusioned with the movement and joined the effort to overthrow the regime after 2001, entering Afghanistan with a band of fighters.

Today, Karzai leads the Afghan fight against the Taliban, but he is a greatly weakened -- and increasingly isolated -- president. Western diplomats here talk of the endemic corruption that infects the Afghan governnment. Disillusionment in rural Afghanistan is feeding the Taliban-led insurgency. In recent weeks, the focus has been on election fraud.

Dozens of Afghan press and a few of my western colleagues filed into the election briefing room. We were handed new pens called "Afghan Crystals" that presumably had been pre-screened to make sure they wouldn't double as some sort of James Bond weaponry.

We waited more than an hour until President Karzai walked in from a side hallway and up to the podium. He was wearing a purple and green shawl, and black jacket over a white shalwar Kameez. His head was covered by his trademark lamb skin cap.

Karzai talked mostly in Dari, which is spoken throughout Kabul, western Afghanistan and much of the north. He dipped into English a few times when foreign reporters asked questions, and once responded in his native Pashto. There were no official translators so I was dependent on Hashim whispering into my ear to help me understand what was being said.

Karzai has been under pressure from western diplomats not to declare victory until the fraud investigations are through, and he seemed to be heeding that advice.

While his campaign aides have spoken confidently of victory, Karzai was more cautious at the press conference. Karzai said he would respect the final outcome even if he was stripped of his votes and lost the election.

Karzai admitted that some government officials might have assisted him during the election, but said he was suprised and shocked by European Union election observer reports that he amassed 1.1 million questionable votes.

"If there was fraud, then it was limited," Karzai said. He went on to say that if he was re-elected he would work to achieve the elusive goals of bringing security to Afghanistan and rebuilding the nation.

As we left the palace, we were stuck in a thick traffic jam of honking vehicles. Throngs of shoppers crowded the sidewalks to buy food and gifts for the approaching celebrations of Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of the Ramadan month of fasting.

Shortly after noon, we got word of another a bomb attack. It was the third major bombing in the past five weeks as the Taliban-led insurgency seeks to bring the war to the capital city.

We quickly headed to the scene of the blast along a major roadway less than mile from the U.S. embassy.

The road was blocked off, so Hashim and I started walking. Several blocks away from the attack, we spotted the first shrapnel -- small pieces of metal that had been hurled with tremendous force. Scraps had somehow smashed through the fourth and fifth-story windows of a government ministry.

Further down the road, we saw a group of investigators gathered around the remains of what appeared to be the vehicle that detonated the bomb. There was just a small pile of rubble.

The target had been an Italian NATO convoy. We saw two destroyed Italian military vehicles, along with three civilian vehicles caught up in the blast.

An Italian investigator was on the scene along with other officials combing through the wreckage even before the body bags had been removed.

Tensions were running high. There is frustration in this international effort to aid Afghanistan as the casualties mount by the day. Most of the losses are in frontline provinces to the east and south. Today, the insurgents hit Kabul as this convoy was headed back into the city.

"Italia, Italia" yelled an Italian investigator as he argued with Afghans officials about who should control a piece of fender that might be used as evidence. It was a piercing, chilling cry, like a wail for the dead.

I later learned that six Italian service members and 10 Afghan civilians died in the attack. More than 50 civilians were injured.

Some of the casualties were in and around a row of small stores that bordered the roadway. The store fronts were shattered by the blast,

"My shop is destroyed. All my money is invested here," said Heyadullah, a pharmacy owner.

Amid the carnage on the roadway, posters of Karzai -- his image on a green background -- still hung from the lamp posts above the wrecked vehicles.