THE TALIBAN fired the first shots in their campaign to disrupt the second round of Afghanistan’s presidential election yesterday as suicide bombers stormed a guesthouse used by UN employees and killed 12 people during a two-hour battle with security forces.
Six UN workers are believed to have been killed in the early- morning attack, which sent terrified guests running from the Bekhtar guesthouse. Others jumped from upper floors as flames engulfed the three-storey building.
A Taliban spokesman described the assault as the opening salvo in a campaign to disrupt the election run-off, due next week.
Seventeen of the 25 residents worked for UNDP Elect, the UN body supporting Afghan electoral authorities, a UN source said.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon will have to decide whether to pull out UNDP Elect staff across the country after the Taliban showed clear intent to kill anyone involved in the process.
A second round without the UN on hand to help guide the Independent Election Commission, a body thought to be highly partisan to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, is unlikely to deliver a credible result.
Mr Karzai described yesterday’s attack as an “inhuman act” and called for security to be stepped up around all international institutions in the city.
Kai Eide, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, said it was “a very dark day for the UN in Afghanistan” and vowed that the work of the international body would continue.
Such a targeted attack on UN staff in Kabul is unprecedented and has long been the nightmare scenario for the organisation, which has thousands of staff in the city. A western diplomat said the UN and foreign aid charities would have to reassess how many staff they would keep in the country.
“[The Taliban] have always kept this card in reserve, and the fact that they have now chosen to play it is very worrying,” he said.
To mount the attack, the militants managed to penetrate one of the best-guarded neighbourhoods in central Kabul. The house next to the guesthouse is owned by Mr Karzai’s father-in-law, and backing on to it is a property owned by Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangrahar province, who was targeted in an attempted assassination on Monday.
Yesterday’s assault began when three Taliban dressed in the green uniforms of the Afghan national police were dropped off by a green police pick-up truck. Afghan security officials said the first bomber detonated himself immediately after getting past the thick metal gate, probably killing or fatally wounding the three guards.
In the following two hours, militants sprayed the building with bullets and grenades before blowing themselves up. A security official who inspected the aftermath said: “The whole place is gutted, there is absolutely nothing left except for the brickwork.”
The detonation of the first bomb sent shrapnel flying across the yard, and through the door and wall of the house and the armoured vehicles parked inside. It appears three residents were shot immediately when they came down to confront the attackers.
Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, a guest, John Turner, rushed to dress and grab an AK47 rifle. Mr Turner, a US contractor, said he moved to the laundry room in the back of the building to help guard a group of foreigners who were hiding there. “I just guarded the people in the washroom and just returned fire,” he said.
Miles Robertson, an Australian election adviser, and his wife were forced to flee when fire started to spread. “We realised that there was no way for us to go out under the stairs or any way for us to come outside,” he said. “I opened the window and stepped out to the landing out front, and had a volley of shots fired at me."