Militant’s open Assault at U.S. Embassy in Kabul
Published by Julia Volkovah under Afghanistan and taliban, US forces in Afghanistan on 4:29 AM
Militants initiated a composite attack against the American Embassy and a close to NATO base on Tuesday, hiding the greatly secured compound with rockets in an attack that move up new queries about the protection of Afghanistan’s capital and the Westerners working there.
As a minimum10 heavy blasts —evidently from rockets launched by insurgents — and waves of automatic weapons fire were reported amongst the drone of bells and English-language warnings conveying Americans inside the embassy to take shelter.
It was not clear whether anybody — Western or Afghan — had been injured or died in the assault, but it showed that one rocket had hit a minibus belonging to the Tak Beer private school, and observers said that children had been carried away bleeding and evidently insensible.
Afghan authorities said many attackers were behind the attack, but it was not clear exactly how many attackers there were or whether they were assaulting from a single or numerous places. As of 2:30 p.m., security forces were on going to fight the assaulters, some of whom showed to be holed up in an incomplete building neglecting the embassy.
“We don’t recognize how many suicide attackers are in the building,” said Col. Abdul Zahir, of the criminal investigative section of the Kabul police. “They’re shelling at the embassy. We’re still in battling position. We can’t say something.”
The attack, which started around 1:15 p.m., was the newly in a string of assaults that have broken off at a shaky sense of security in the capital. In August, insurgent murdered eight people in an assault on a British cultural center, and in June, nine suicide attackers broken layers of security to assault the hillside Intercontinental Hotel.
On Monday afternoon, the streets nearby the location of the attack, usually choked with the traffic of minibuses, bicycles and Toyotas, were deserted of all but security forces and people competing for cover.
“We don’t aware what’s occurring,” one Afghan soldier said. “All over the place you can hear gun firing.”
Taliban’s spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid professed responsibility for the assault in a text message, stating the Taliban had embarked to assault the embassy, a NATO base and Afghan government building. His statement could not be instantly verified.
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said there was a continuing assault in the center of Kabul, but could not give any other information or say whether NATO forces were engaged in fighting the attackers.
The attack came under two months after Afghan forces believed official responsibility for security in the capital, one of several corners of the country where security was formally handed over in July.
