Afghan president Hamid Karzai today said a co-ordinated Taliban attack showed a "failure" by Afghan intelligence and Nato as heavy street fighting between insurgents and security forces came to an end after 18 hours.
"The fact terrorists were able to enter Kabul and other provinces was an intelligence failure for us and especially for Nato," his office said in a statement, which also strongly condemned the attack.
An18-hour Taliban attack on the Afghan capital ended today when insurgents in two buildings were overcome by heavy gunfire from Afghan-led forces and pre-dawn air assaults from US-led coalition helicopters.
Mr Karzai's office said 36 insurgents were killed in the attacks that 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 Taliban began their near-simultaneous assaults on embassies, government buildings and Nato bases at 1.30pm yesterday, saying it was their response to Nato’s recent claims that the uprising was weak.
The US, German and British embassies and some coalition and Afghan government buildings took direct and indirect fire, according to a spokesman for the US-led coalition.
Residents near the parliament building said rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire rocked their neighbourhood throughout the night and into the morning.
Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said militants took up positions in a building under construction near parliament. Some MPs grabbed weapons and started fighting when militants fired on the parliament building yesterday.
Residents reported gunfire and explosions today, but Mr Sediqi said the militants’ stand-off with Afghan security forces had ended.
The sophistication and firepower of the latest strikes, as well as the high-profile government and foreign targets, bore the hallmarks of the attack last autumn and others carried out by Haqqani insurgents.
As in the earlier attack, armed insurgents took over half-built buildings yesterday and used them to fire down on nearby embassies and bases. In the streets of Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood, where a Nato base and a number of embassies, including the US embassy, are located, residents scrambled for cover amid gunfire.
Militants also attacked a Nato site on the outskirts of Kabul, where a joint Greek-Turkish base came under heavy fire and forces responded with heavy-calibre machine guns, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
The eastern cities of Jalalabad, Gardez and Pul-e-Alam also came under attack, with suicide bombers trying to storm a Nato base, an airport and police installations.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said dozens of suicide attackers and gunmen were involved in attacks that had been planned for two months to show the insurgency’s power after Nato commanders called the Taliban weak and said there was no indication they were planning a spring offensive.
“We are strong and we can attack anywhere we want,” Mujahid said, calling the attacks an opening salvo ahead of the yearly spring offensive, when warmer weather typically brings increased attacks.
Reuters, AP