Attack on Kabul ends after 20 hours; 14 killed and six NATO troops injured

An assault by Taliban insurgents on the heart of Kabul’s diplomatic and military enclave has ended after 20 hours, when security forces killed the last of six attackers, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior said on Wednesday.

“The operation just ended and 6 terrorists were killed by Police, details on casualties will be announced later,” spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said on Twitter, according to Reuters.

Eleven Afghans were killed including three children in the Tuesday-Wednesday attacks which focused on the US embassy and the headquarters of NATO-led troops in Kabul, the NATO-led military coalition said.

Interior ministry spokesman Seddiqi previously said that three police were also killed, taking the overall toll to 14.

“Nineteen (were) wounded, 11 killed which includes three children,” said Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). He added that six foreign troops had been injured, according to AFP.

The insurgents had holed up in a multi-storey building still under construction, and launched their biggest assault on the Afghan capital early on Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier on Wednesday, NATO attack helicopters circled over an unfinished building in the center of Kabul in an operation to flush out Taliban fighters.

A source in the office of the Kabul police said fighting began again early on Wednesday, while a Taliban spokesman in a text message to Reuters said the group’s fighters were well and fighting foreign forces.

A squad of insurgents took over the shopping centre under construction on the outskirts of Kabul’s diplomatic district on Tuesday, armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-47 assault rifles and suicide vests.

Explosions were interspersed with gunfire all afternoon and several rockets landed in the up market Wazir Akbar Khan district, near embassies. One hit a school bus but it appeared to have been empty at the time.

The gun battle around Abdul Haq square went on into the early evening, with three attackers killed and one or two still at large nearly eight hours after the assault began, the Interior Ministry said.

The insurgents also launched attacks in three other areas of the capital, in the biggest challenge to foreign forces as they prepare to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan forces across the country by 2014.

A Senate panel on Tuesday approved a $1.6 billion cut in projected U.S. funding for Afghan security forces, part of a significant reduction in outlays for training and equipping Afghan army and police expected in the coming years, Reuters reported.

“The scale of today's attack is unprecedented,” said Andrew Exum, fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“There was almost certainly either a break-down in security among the Afghans with responsibility for Kabul or an intelligence failure.”

The U.S. and British embassies and the NATO-led coalition said all their employees were safe.

Violence is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001, with high levels of foreign troop deaths and record civilian casualties.

The assault was the second big attack in the city in less than a month after suicide bombers targeted the British Council headquarters in mid-August, killing nine people.

In late June, insurgents launched an assault on a hotel in the capital frequented by Westerners, killing at least 10. But Tuesday’s attack was even more ambitious.