Terrorists in Kabul Attack UN Guesthouses and Hotel

UPDATE: Insurgents Wednesday morning attacked two guesthouses and a hotel in downtown Kabul that housed United Nations and other international staff, in one of their most daring attacks on the Afghan capital.

According to the Associated Press, at least seven people were killed in the guesthouse attacks, including three United Nations staff.

There also were sounds of explosions elsewhere in the city, suggesting a large-scale, coordinated attack on the capital.

The assailants managed to take over one of the guesthouses, Bakhtar, but were repelled by security guards at another, the Imperial. According to a U.N. spokesman in Kabul, three U.N. staff members were killed in the Bakhtar attack, and an unknown number was injured.

By midmorning the hostage crisis appeared to be over and the building secured, with firemen trying to extinguish fire amid billowing smoke on the roof.

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UN staff killed in Kabul attack

The attack began at dawn on Wednesday

At least three UN employees have been killed in an attack in the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul, the UN says.

Heavy gunfire and an explosion were heard at a guesthouse used by the UN, after militants entered the building.

An Afghan official later told the BBC that six foreigners and three gunmen were killed in the attack for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

There are also reports of rockets being fired at the Serena Hotel in the city, which is used by diplomats.

There is no information yet on whether anyone has been injured or killed at the hotel, but about 100 people inside at the time were taken to secure rooms.

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Afghan forces exchanged gunfire with a group of terrorists holed up inside an international guest house in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, police said.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was possible some of its staff and other foreigners were inside.

Intense automatic weapons fire and an explosion resounded in the capital, and plumes of black smoke rose above buildings.

A Reuters witness said a number of streets had been cordoned off by the police as the gunfire continued, and sirens reverberated across the city.

“There are five or six terrorists inside,” said Waheed Sadiqi, a policeman at the scene.

An increasingly resurgent Taliban have vowed to stage attacks ahead of a second-round run-off in Afghanistan’s presidential election on Nov. 7.

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AFP reprts

Afghan police were locked in a stand-off with a “group of terrorists” holed up in an apartment building in central Kabul on Wednesday, a police officer at the scene said.

The police officer told AFP that one of the group detonated an explosives vest before the rest of the group fled into the apartment building in a crowded neighbourhood near Kabul’s Chicken Street.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” he said.

An AFP reporter and photographer saw a number of wounded being taken from the area to a local hospital, including at least two foreigners.

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NY Times Reporter Tells His Story – Held by the Taliban

Today the New York Times launched the first installment in a five-part series offering a first-person account by reporter David Rohde, of his seven months as a captive of the Taliban in Pakistan. Mr. Rohde was kidnapped with two Afghan colleagues on Nov. 10, 2008, as they traveled to an interview with a Taliban commander outside of Kabul, Afghanistan.

Rohde and Afghan reporter Tahir Ludin, 35, you might remember,escaped their captors by climbing over the wall of a compound where they were held in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.

The articles are based on Mr. Rohde’s recollections and, where possible, records kept by his family and colleagues. For safety reasons, certain names and details have been withheld.

The car’s engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage.

Another gunman in the passenger seat turned and stared at us as he gripped his Kalashnikov rifle. No one spoke. I glanced at the bleak landscape outside — reddish soil and black boulders as far as the eye could see — and feared we would be dead within minutes.

It was last Nov. 10, and I had been headed to a meeting with a Taliban commander along with an Afghan journalist, Tahir Luddin, and our driver, Asad Mangal. The commander had invited us to interview him outside Kabul for reporting I was pursuing about Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The longer I looked at the gunman in the passenger seat, the more nervous I became. His face showed little emotion. His eyes were dark, flat and lifeless.

I thought of my wife and family and was overcome with shame. An interview that seemed crucial hours earlier now seemed absurd and reckless. I had risked the lives of Tahir and Asad — as well as my own life. We reached a dry riverbed and the car stopped. “They’re going to kill us,” Tahir whispered. “They’re going to kill us.”

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Taliban Claims Responsibility For Massive Blast In Kabul

The Taliban claimed responsibility for a large suicide car bomb that detonated on Saturday in the heart of the Afghan capital’s most secure neighborhood just five days before an election the Islamist group has vowed to disrupt.

Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said at least four people were killed and 91 wounded in the blast, which hit outside the sprawling headquarters of the NATO-led international force, near the U.S. embassy, in Kabul.

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Al Qaeda Planning Attacks On US From Pakistan – Obama

United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday said Al Qaeda was planning attacks on the US from its hideouts in Pakistan, a private TV channel reported.

Obama said the US would “chase and defeat the terrorist organisation wherever it is present in the world”, the channel said. Addressing a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London, Obama said US policy was clear for both Pakistan and Afghanistan and Kabul would not be allowed to become a safe haven for Al Qaeda. Read more

Mumbai Style Terror Attack in Kabul – 26 Dead Scores Injured

Three closely coordinated attacks left 20 people dead and at least 54 wounded in the Afghan capital yesterday morning, after separate teams of gunmen and bombers targeted two downtown government ministries and a suburban corrections facility. The attacks created panic in the crowded city center until security forces were able to restore control after a four-hour battle.

All eight attackers were also killed.

A spokesman for the Islamic Taliban insurgency claimed responsibility for the attacks, telling the Associated Press they were in response to the poor treatment of prisoners in Afghan custody. But analysts said the audacious assaults seemed timed to test the resolve of Afghan and US officials as the Obama administration is debating a new strategy for Afghanistan, and just days before the arrival of the new US special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke.

The most dramatic scenes unfolded at the Ministry of Justice. Employees cowered in their locked offices as gunfire erupted, and crowds fled in the surrounding, traffic-clogged streets.

Officials said five men armed with guns and suicide vests killed one guard at the entrance, then entered and began firing on guards and employees throughout the four-story building. Witnesses said some people jumped from the second and even third floors to escape.

Although the death toll was much lower, many people here immediately compared the attack to the terrorist siege in the Indian city of Mumbai in November, when a highly trained squad entered the port city by boat and wreaked havoc for three days, attacking luxury hotels and other buildings and killing more than 170 people.

Yesterday’s attack was the worst in Kabul since July, when a suicide bomber destroyed the Indian Embassy, killing more than 60 people.

The Afghan capital has been increasingly targeted by Islamic insurgents, who have been waging war against the government in the Afghan countryside since 2006.

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