Coordinated Taliban assaults target presidential palace, embassies

Taliban's 'spring offensive' reminds Kabul its reach

Simultaneous attacks on embassies, Nato HQ and parliament marks group's most ambitious strike

the Guardian,

Sunday 15 April 2012 21.56 BST

When crackles of Kalashnikov fire interrupted his afternoon language class, Taghi Sefari barely looked up from his books. Kabul is, after all, a city used to violence. But when three loud blasts echoed through the school moments later, the veneer of calm shattered.

"The boys and girls ran out, some were crying, some were screaming," 14 year-old Sefari said several hours later, as heavy machine-gun fire still echoed around the Afghan parliament, target of perhaps the most ambitious Taliban attacks on Kabul in more than a decade. "When we were running away, a rocket hit the street, and one classmate was wounded. Blood started pouring from his head, and the police took him to hospital."

As reports multiplied of gunfire and explosions proliferating across the city, residents scrambled to work out what was going on. An attack on an aviation college; rockets fired at embassy compounds; assaults on government buildings. Parents raced to call children; friends called friends.

Around two dozen fighters had launched a "spring offensive" that the Taliban said was months in the planning. Despite heavy fortifications around Kabul's diplomatic district their rockets hit the German and Japanese embassies and the gate of a British residence, causing damage but no injuries.

The toll after eight hours of fighting was low: the head of Kabul's hospitals said 12 people were wounded, and none killed. The interior ministry reported deaths of nearly two dozen insurgents, although witnesses saw the bodies of at least two members of the security forces being carried away.

The ambitious, heavily guarded targets, and the co-ordination of multiple blatant attacks in Kabul and across another swath of the country were a pointed reminder of the insurgency's reach.

Trapped Kabul residents milled around the edge of the embassy district hoping the gunfire would end soon. Masi Ahmadi, 13, borrowed a phone to call home and tell his mother that he and his younger brother had left their school and couldn't get home, but weren't in any danger.

Eighteen year-old Abdul Jalil waited to see if his mother, locked in nearby offices that insurgents tried to breach, was OK. In a city where many lives are laced with tragedy, Jalil had endured a more painful brush with the Taliban when a suicide attack on an internet cafe killed his only brother seven years ago.

"I was happy when he was alive," Jalil said, as children peeked around a street corner to watch sweating commandos rush towards the insurgent stronghold, then darted back as gunfire started up again.

The attacks were confronted almost entirely by Afghan police and soldiers, who have needed heavy support handling past attacks, but on Sunday had assistance only from a few permanent Norwegian mentors. Their efforts were hailed by Nato and the Afghan government.

"I am enormously proud of how quickly Afghan security forces responded to today's attacks in Kabul," said General John Allen, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan. He said offers of foreign help had been declined so far, despite exchanges of gunfire on Sunday night.

"I consider it a testament to their skill and professionalism – of how far they've come – that they haven't yet asked for that support," he added.

At least one member of parliament from the Taliban's home province of Kandahar also joined the battle, borrowing an assault rifle from a policeman and taking to the roof of the legislature building.

"I'm the representative of my people and I have to defend them," Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamidzai told Reuters.

Near the parliament a crackling police radio warned of a possible suicide vehicle packed with explosives and disguised as an ambulance, and a policeman's fighting partridge, terrified by hours of explosions, hurled itself frantically against the bars of a wooden cage.

Brickwork and steel columns of the insurgents' temporary stronghold poked above the Kabul trees, and commandos who had taken over security in the area shooed away the few curious bystanders.

"My parents don't know I am out," admitted 11 year-old Edrees, as smoke rose from the occupied building. "I told them I went to my friend's house, and they think we are still inside."

But away from the immediate danger, Kabulis went about their business ignoring the distant rattle of guns.

"The fighters are doing their fighting and I'm staying here to do my business," said 29-year-old Khalilullah, who kept his Perfect Special Juice stall open, despite the shuttered and padlocked store-fronts of competitors. "I grew up in a war."

Mokhtar Amiri contributed to this report

Analysis from Radio New Zealand

TALIBAN CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY LATEST ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN

A former analyst at the US State Department, Professor Martin Weinbaum, joins the programme to talk about the 'spring offensive' which the Taliban has claimed responsibility for in Afghanistan..