Suicide bombers strike at heart of Afghan capital

Six attackers shot dead after detonating car bomb in assault on Kabul spy compound close to foreign embassies
Afghan security forces inspect the scene after a suicide bomb attack on an Afghan spy compound
Afghan security forces inspect the scene after a suicide bomb attack on the heavily fortified spy compound at the heart of Kabul. Photograph: Musadeq Sadeq/AP

A six-strong suicide squad has attacked a heavily-fortified spy compound at the heart of the Afghan capital, killing at least one commando and wounding dozens of civilians in the first major Taliban attack on Kabul this year.

An attacker detonated a huge car bomb at the gate of the compound, then five men wearing suicide vests and armed with assault rifles and grenades jumped out of a nearby minivan and tried to race inside. All were shot dead before they detonated their explosives.

"The area was covered first with white smoke, then with dark smoke. When it cleared, I could see three bodies," said Ghulam Farouq Haqiqi, who was visiting the capital from violent eastern Ghazni province, where he is part of an anti-Taliban militia. "There were 10 or 15 vehicles around my car, everyone inside them was wounded. I don't know how we escaped unharmed."

The attackers' second vehicle was also rigged with explosives, said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi, adding that police defused them just minutes before a timer mechanism would have caused a second large blast.

In a worrying sign of evolving insurgent tactics, the explosives were gel-based, a kind not seen before in Kabul, said Shafiqullah Tahiri, spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency.

The attack, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, came just a few weeks after a suicide attacker with explosives hidden in his underwear nearly killed the country's spy chief, NDS head Assadullah Khalid. He is now recovering from severe internal injuries in the US, and it may be months before he can return to work, official sources say.

The spy compound attacked on Wednesday lies on a normally crowded road near a hospital, Kabul police headquarters, the interior ministry and a string of stationery shops and photo studios. Bitter weather and a light snowfall may have kept some pedestrians inside, but 33 civilians were wounded, 17 of them seriously, Seddiqi said.

"I felt very close to death. I called my family to ask them to pray for me," said taxi driver Mohammad Assan, whose car was shattered by the blast. Dried trails of blood marked his left cheek, and he was shivering in a thin jacket as a dusting of snow covered the scene, but too worried about leaving the wreckage of his car to seek warmth or medical help. "They aren't even letting me go see it," he said with a grimace from behind a security cordon.

Perhaps tipped off about an impending attack, police had stepped up checks on cars in recent days, but it is almost impossible to search every vehicle driving through crowded, chaotic Kabul, a city designed for about half a million people but now home to perhaps 10 times that many.

In a reminder of how easy it can be for would-be attackers to blend in with the civilian population, the second group of attackers were actually arguing with a traffic policeman just minutes before the blast as he tried to move them on from an illegal parking spot outside a nearby bookstore.

"I told them they couldn't stop there," said senior officer Humayoun Ekhlas, who did not see the group's hidden guns. "They had also scratched someone's car, and he was trying to get some money from them to pay for it, but at that moment there was an explosion."

"They came out with AK-47s and started running towards the gate of the NDS. They were very young, and wearing shalwar kameez. They looked just around 18 to 20 years old."

Ekhlas said the men were soon shot down by guards from the security forces and a nearby ministry of interior checkpoint, but he saw one dead commando, and a seriously injured teenage boy.

Also near the blast site are a string of embassies, including ones representing India, Iran, Turkey and the Netherlands, and a restaurant popular with expats, but none of them appeared to have suffered any damage. The Nato-led coalition said it was not aware of any casualties from its forces.

Streets away from the blast shops, cafes were open and Kabul's war-weary inhabitants went about their business as usual.

On the leading Tolo television channel, after a brief bulletin, programming returned to a scheduled episode of CSI.

Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri