Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers attacked buildings across the heart of Kabul yesterday, triggering fierce gun battles with security forces and killing at least five people, including a child.
Fires were blazing after two shopping centers, a cinema and the only five-star hotel in the Afghan capital were targeted by heavily armed militants who set off a wave of explosions, witnesses and officials said.
Five people including civilians and security personnel were killed and 38 wounded, the public health ministry said, in the most spectacular strike on Kabul since Taliban militants laid siege to government buildings in February last year, killing at least 26 people.
Defense ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi said a child was among the dead. He also told Afghan TV that “four terrorists” had been killed, two who blew themselves up and two were shot dead by security forces.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the situation was “under control” after hours of fighting in the highly fortified capital.
“The enemies of the Afghan people conducted a series of attacks today, causing fear and terror among the population,” Karzai said in a statement.
“The president condemns these terrorist attacks and has instructed the security entities to intensify security in the city and take action to arrest those responsible for these brutal and unpatriotic attacks,” he said.
The blitz of attacks began at the peak of morning rush hour, when suicide bombers stormed major government and commercial buildings around Pashtunistan Square, setting off explosions and sending clouds of black smoke into the sky.
The Islamist Taliban militia, waging an increasingly deadly insurgency against the Western-backed Kabul government and foreign troops in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility.
TYPHOON: The storm’s path indicates a high possibility of Krathon making landfall in Pingtung County, depending on when the storm turns north, the CWA said Typhoon Krathon is strengthening and is more likely to make landfall in Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said in a forecast released yesterday afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the CWA’s updated sea warning for Krathon showed that the storm was about 430km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point. It was moving in west-northwest at 9kph, with maximum sustained winds of 119kph and gusts of up to 155kph, CWA data showed. Krathon is expected to move further west before turning north tomorrow, CWA forecaster Wu Wan-hua (伍婉華) said. The CWA’s latest forecast and other countries’ projections of the storm’s path indicate a higher
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