KABUL – Afghan president Hamid Karzai has said a co-ordinated Taliban attack showed a failure by Afghan intelligence and especially by Nato, as heavy street fighting between insurgents and security forces petered out after 18 hours.
Battles, which broke out at noon on Sunday, gripped the city’s central districts through the night, with large explosions and gunfire lighting up alleys and streets.
“The fact terrorists were able to enter Kabul and other provinces was an intelligence failure for us and especially for Nato,” Mr Karzai’s office said in a statement, which also strongly condemned the attack.
Although the death toll was relatively low considering the scale of the assault, it highlighted the ability of militants to strike at high-profile targets in the heart of the city even after more than 10 years of war.
Mr Karzai echoed his western backers by praising Afghan security forces, saying they had proven their ability to defend their country – a task that will increasingly fall to them as foreign armies reduce their troop numbers in Afghanistan.
His office said 36 insurgents were killed in the attacks, which paralysed Kabul’s government district and which targeted three other provinces in what the Taliban called the start of a spring offensive. One fighter was captured.
Eleven members of the Afghan security forces and four civilians were killed in the attacks in Kabul and the eastern Nangarhar, Logar and Paktia provinces, it said. “In only a short time we managed to cut short their devilish plans,” said defence ministry chief of operations Afzal Aman. “They carried suicide vests, but managed to do nothing except be killed.”
The attacks were also another election-year setback in Afghanistan for US president Barack Obama, who wants to present the campaign against the Taliban as a success before the departure of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Insurgents were killed attacking the Afghan parliament and in a multi-storey building under construction that they had occupied in order to fire rocket-propelled grenades and rifles down on the fortified diplomatic enclave.
More were killed in Kabul’s east and while attacking a Nato base in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Fighting in the capital only ended with special forces assaults as dawn broke. Assisting physically for the first time in the attack, Nato helicopters launched strafing attacks on gunmen in the building site, which overlooked the Nato headquarters and several embassies, including the British and German missions.
Elite Afghan soldiers scaled scaffolding to outflank the insurgents, who took up defensive positions on the upper floor of the half-built structure. “I could not sleep because of all this gunfire. It’s been the whole night,” said one resident, Hamdullah.
The assault, which began with attacks on embassies, a supermarket, a hotel and the parliament, was one of the most serious on the capital since US-backed Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power in 2001. – (Reuters)