AFGAN MILITANT ATTACK NEAR COALATION BASES The Taliban Monday launched high-profile attacks across Afghanistan, including a strike on the Kabul airport—operations that were meant to showcase the insurgency’s strength but that ended up illustrating the growing competency of Afghan security forces. The two main attacks, on the military side of the Kabul airport and on a provincial council compound in the southern province of Zabul, concluded with all the insurgents killed off and minimal casualties among Afghan civilians or security forces, Afghan officials said. “The fact that you are seeing this showy, but ultimately ineffective attack means that Afghan national security forces remain firmly in control of the capital,” said Graeme Smith, Kabul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank. The insurgents, he added, “are just making their presence felt.” Still, nerves were rattled in Kabul in the dawn hours of Monday as explosions and machine-gun volleys reverberated through the capital city. Wearing police uniforms, seven insurgents—most of them also sporting suicide-bomb vests—had taken over two unfinished buildings adjacent to the northern side of the Kabul airport, police said. Seizing buildings under construction and turning their upper floors into firing positions has long been a favored Taliban tactic in Kabul, used in previous spectacular attacks. This time, too, the Taliban began raining rocket-propelled grenades and bullets at their targets. The northern side of the airport is a vast military camp where the U.S.-led coalition keeps its main operational headquarters in Afghanistan. Several construction workers from the northern province of Samangan were sleeping in one unfinished five-story structure that the Taliban had taken over. These workers said the Taliban first lined them up with their faces to the wall, and then ordered them to flee the building before fighting started in earnest. Afghan police and army units, aided by Norwegian special forces and U.S. advisers, quickly flocked to the area, containing the violence. The airport base’s perimeter wall was not breached, the coalition said. Fighting in the area, however, forced the country’s aviation authorities to close down Afghanistan’s main airport and halt all takeoffs and landings, with inbound international flights diverted to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and to the Tajikistan capital city of Dushanbe. While no insurgent rockets made a direct hit on the runway, airport staff shut down the facility because they found pieces of shrapnel on the runway and were concerned the shrapnel may puncture aircraft’s tires, said Gen. Juma Gul Adil, police chief of the Kabul airport. Some four hours after the attack began, security forces managed to clear both buildings, ending the standoff. Five of the Taliban attackers were killed in the battle, and the two others detonated their suicide vests, said Kabul police chief Gen. Ayub Salangi. No civilians or troops died, he added. Journalists taken on a tour of the buildings after the clearing operations ended were shown one of the bearded attackers lying in a pool of blood, much of his torso ripped open by the explosion but his limbs still clothed in an Afghan Border Police uniform. A Taliban spokesman who claimed responsibility for Monday’s Kabul attack said the insurgents targeted only the military part of the airport because U.S. forces are stationed there. Attacks in the Kabul airport area are relatively rare, and the halting of air traffic rarer still. Monday’s assault took place hours after Afghan President Hamid Karzai flew from the airport to the Gulf emirate of Qatar to discuss plans for opening a Taliban peace negotiating office there. In a statement from Qatar, Mr. Karzai called on the Taliban “not to be an instrument to kill their compatriots and destroy the country.” The Taliban have stepped up their operations in the Afghan capital and across the country this year, trying to show the insurgency’s undiminished potency as the U.S.-led coalition forces withdraw. The coalition is expected to announce later this month the “milestone” of putting Afghan forces in the lead across the country, ahead of ending the coalition’s mandate at the end of 2014. While coalition casualties have declined, the Afghan forces have been losing some 80 to 120 men killed in action per week in recent months. Shortly after the all-clear in Kabul, six suicide bombers tried to storm the provincial council in Zabul, with one of them detonating his vest, and the others attempting to break into the compound, said deputy governor Mohammad Jan Rasulyar. All the attackers were quickly killed by the Afghan security troops, he said. According to Mr. Karzai’s statement, one policeman was also killed. In addition, some 18 people were injured, including one member of the provincial council, Mr. Rasulyar said. Also on Monday morning, Afghan security forces foiled an insurgent attack on the governor’s compound in the Surobi district east of Kabul, killing one assailant and arresting two others, said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. In a separate incident, a coalition soldier was killed Monday in an improvisedexplosive attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. The death followed the killing of an Italian officer in western Afghanistan and an insider attack that killed two U.S. troops and one U.S. civilian in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend. Monday’s incident at the airport was the second major insurgent assault in Kabul in little over two weeks. Last month, the Taliban launched an attack on the compound of a United Nations-affiliated refugee body, the International Organization for Migration. Days later, insurgents also attacked the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Rahul Rai
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:20:22 +0000
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