Taliban launch attack near Afghan airport
Source: Agencies |
June 11, 2013, Tuesday
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SEVEN heavily armed Taliban fighters launched a pre-dawn attack near Afghanistan's main airport yesterday, apparently targeting NATO's airport headquarters with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and at least one large bomb. Two Afghan civilians were wounded and all the attackers were killed after an hours-long battle.
In addition to the airport attack, six militants wearing suicide bomb vests tried to storm the provincial council building in the capital of southern Zabul province, while three attempted to attack a district police headquarters near the capital. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed a Polish soldier in the NATO force.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said that in Zabul they managed to wound 18 people, including three police officers, when they detonated a car bomb outside the building in the city of Qalat, but security forces shot and killed them before they managed to enter.
On the outskirts of Kabul, police killed one attacker and arrested two others who tried to storm the headquarters building in the Surobi district.
The attack against the capital's airport appeared aimed at creating a sense of insecurity among residents of Kabul and sow panic in the population. The insurgents did not get close enough to attack aircraft and were not near the runway's flight path. Even if they had managed to damage the airport, it would have affected civilian flights but not had an impact on military operations, which are carried out from a military airfield at Bagram about 50 kilometers north of the capital.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government would not be deterred by the attacks.
"These cowardly terrorist attacks on the Afghan people cannot change the chosen path of the Afghan people toward progress, development, peace and elections," Karzai said, referring to next spring's election to elect a new head of state.
The Kabul airport itself was not damaged and reopened shortly after the fighting was over, said airport chief Yaqub Rassuli.
"There was no damage to the runway. Some shrapnel fell nearby, but we have cleared it away," Rassuli said.
Police said that attackers wearing suicide vests occupied one or two buildings under construction on the west side of the airport and began firing at the NATO facility, which was quite a distance away. It was unclear whether they hit anything inside that facility.
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