The United Nations said it is reviewing security in Afghanistan after Taliban militants raided a Kabul guesthouse and killed at least five UN workers in a bid to disrupt next month's presidential elections.
Three gunmen, armed with assault rifles, grenades and suicide vests, attacked at dawn yesterday and fired at international staff as they tried to escape.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon condemned the "despicable and brutal" killings, while the Obama administration said extremists wouldn't succeed in spoiling the November 7th vote.
The UN will "look at whether other appropriate measures need to be taken to protect all our staff," special representative Kai Eide said in a statement.
The attack and a bombing yesterday in neighboring Pakistan that killed 105 people in a crowded Peshawar market, increased pressure on president Barack Obama to find a strategy to contain the Taliban and its allies.
"We watch this situation continue to deteriorate while this long, protracted process of decision-making goes on," Republican Senator John McCain told CBS yesterday.
The capital has been hit several times in recent weeks, including a suicide bombing outside the Indian Embassy on October 8th that killed 17 people.
The runoff was triggered by a partial recount of the August 20th vote that found more than 1 million ballots, most of them for Karzai, were suspect, putting his tally below the more than 50 percent needed to win in the first round.
The Obama administration is "confident that there are appropriate resources to conduct an election and that the will of the Afghan people won't be thwarted," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington yesterday.
Bloomberg