AT LEAST eight Afghan police and one foreigner are believed to have been killed after the Taliban marked the anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from Britain with an elaborate, multiphased attack on the British Council building in Kabul.
The assault on the compound in the west of the city began when a suicide car bomber detonated a vehicle at the front gate.
Witnesses said several heavily armed insurgents then rushed out of a side street shouting, firing in the air and racing towards the open gate. Afghan officials believed the number of attackers was between two and four.
British foreign office minister Alistair Burt said all British nationals caught up in the attack were safe. Jumadin, a worker at a nearby petrol station, said the force of the initial blast was enough to throw him to the ground. “I thought I was going to die,” he said. “When the policemen rushed to the area from the police district, at least three were shot dead near the building.”
At midday, the relatively upmarket Kabul neighbourhood resembled a war zone.
Six hours after the start of the attack, fighting continued between the attackers and security forces. Loud explosions and long bursts of gunfire could be heard from within the building, while circling helicopters released counter-missile flares and a medical evacuation helicopter landed just 50m from the site before departing.
After an initial period when the fighting appeared to have ended, a volley of machine-gun fire sent British soldiers ducking behind their armoured vehicles.
The heavily fortified compound is usually protected by a mixed force of Afghan and Nepali guards. “It is a sad fact that once again an attack aimed at the international community has killed Afghans,” Mr Burt said. “This attack, against people working to help build a better future for Afghanistan, will not lessen the UK’s resolve to support the Afghan people.”
British soldiers rushed to the UK government’s cultural and educational mission, joining Afghan police and soldiers and the New Zealand SAS, but more than six hours after the attack at least one insurgent was thought to be at large in the compound.
The area hosts the British Council and two of the country’s top politicians – the leader of the opposition and one of President Hamid Karzai’s vice-presidents.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman reached by phone, said the target was the British Council and a guesthouse that he claimed, it would appear incorrectly, was located in the same compound.
“We attacked the buildings because we want to remind the British that we won our independence from them before and we will do it again,” he said.
Although Afghanistan was not a formal British colony at the time, the country celebrates the end of the Third Anglo-Afghan war in 1919, when the country won the right to pursue a foreign policy independent of the British Raj.
The Afghan government, which has in the past tried to restrict initial coverage of terrorist attacks, appeared to put restraints on at least one television channel, Afghan News, which abruptly dropped its reporting broadcast and switched to patriotic songs.
Journalists were ordered to stop taking photographs when what appeared to be a seriously wounded New Zealand special forces soldier was stretchered out of the building and loaded on to the medevac helicopter.
– ( Guardian service)