A Taliban suicide squad armed with rockets yesterday targeted a landmark Afghan peace conference hosted by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a bid to seek a consensus on how to end nearly nine years of war.
At least five explosions, believed to be caused by rockets, and gunfire erupted near the giant air-conditioned tent where 1,600 delegates from across the country and Western diplomats attended the opening of the peace jirga.
One of the jirga organizers said suicide bombers dressed in burqas targeted the event, which was being protected by 12,000 security personnel, but that the attack was unsuccessful.
PHOTO: AFP
“Three suicide bombers wearing burqas entered a house which was under construction. They fired one RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] towards the tent,” Ghulam Farooq Wardak told delegates.
“Thank God, two of them were killed, paying for their crimes. The third has been captured,” he said.
The Taliban claimed it had dispatched four suicide bombers armed with guns and rockets who were threatening the jirga from a nearby rooftop.
Two blasts were heard as Karzai delivered his opening address in which he condemned the Taliban for bringing suffering and oppression, while a third took place later about 200m away from the venue, reporters said.
Karzai left the jirga on schedule after his address, driven away in his customary armored convoy.
Intensifying gunfire rattled the vicinity of the tent in the southeastern Kabul suburbs, where the interior ministry said Afghan police had surrounded a “terror” cell holed up in a house nearby.
“There is terrorist activity going on in a house in Afshar. The house has been surrounded by police,” interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
Sayed Kabiri, chief doctor at a Kabul hospital, said two people had been admitted with injuries caused by the rocket attacks.
“We have four suicide attackers placed on the top of a tall building near the jirga tent. They are threatening the jirga tent,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“They are using rockets, they have small arms and have strapped explosives to their bodies,” he said.
Karzai had appealed to the jirga delegates to advise him on how to bring the poverty-stricken country, blighted by three decades of war, out of the latest conflict and encourage the Taliban to disarm.
“We need a national consultation, a peace consultation all over Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
“The Afghan nation is looking at you. They await your decisions, your advice so that you can show the Afghan nation the way to reach peace, to rescue Afghanistan from this suffering and pain,” he said.
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