Attackers die as Kabul siege ends
A 20-hour attack in the heart of Kabul ended this morning after a final volley of helicopter gunfire as Afghan police ferreted out and killed the last few assailants who had taken over a half-built property to fire on the nearby US Embassy and Nato compounds.
“The terrorist attack in Kabul is over,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The bold assault, which began yesterday, left seven Afghans dead, including four police officers and three civilians, and raised fresh doubts about the Afghans’ ability to secure their nation as US and other foreign troops begin to withdraw. No Nato or US Embassy employees were hurt in the attack.
Two or three of the assailants had held out overnight but were killed in the final morning assault by Afghan forces, said Hashmat Stanekzai, a spokesman for the Kabul police chief.
In all, six attackers had occupied the unfinished, 11-storey high-rise at one of the main traffic circles in the Afghan capital, he said. Previously, officials said they believed only four attackers were inside.
At least one other police officer was killed in an attack in the west of Kabul yesterday as suicide bombers tried to strike in a number of neighbourhoods, taking the total number of dead in the co-ordinated attacks across the city to at least eight.
“Conditions in Kabul city are back to normal and all our countrymen can go about their daily lives without any worries,” the Interior Ministry said.
The sophisticated attack was the first time insurgents have organised such a complex assault against multiple targets in separate parts of the Afghan capital.
The militants’ seeming ability to strike at will in the most heavily defended part of Kabul also suggested that they may have had help from rogue elements in the Afghan security forces.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, though Kabul’s deputy police chief said he thought an affiliated organisation, the Haqqani network, had carried it out.
