Gunmen carried out a pre-dawn rocket attack on Kabul International Airport yesterday, temporarily shutting down the facility and setting off a gunbattle with security forces in which four attackers were killed, officials said.
The militants occupied two buildings that were under construction about 700m north of the facility and used them as a base to direct rockets and gunfire toward the airport and international jet fighters flying over Kabul, Afghan Army General Afzal Aman said.
Kabul police chief Mohammed Zahir Zahir later said four of the attackers were killed and that the attack was halted without any civilian or police casualties.
Photo: Reuters
The airport was later reopened and operations returned to normal, Zahir said, after security forces inspected the runways for shrapnel and explosives.
The pre-dawn attack comes during a tense time in Afghanistan, as a recount is under way from the disputed second round of a presidential election seen as key to insuring a peaceful transfer of power ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign troops by the end of the year.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the airport attack in a call to The Associated Press.
Aman said several rockets hit the airport, but no planes were damaged.
The airport hosts civilian traffic and serves as a base for NATO-led forces that have been fighting the Taliban and other insurgents for more than a decade. Rocket attacks near the airport are not rare, but are not usually this close.
Alarms sounded at the US embassy in Kabul, as they usually do when there is an attack in the city, as International Security Assistance Force jet fighters patrolled overhead.
The attack came nearly a week after US Secretary of State John Kerry helped broker a deal to carry out a full audit of last month’s presidential runoff following allegations of fraud by supporters of both candidates.
Unofficial and disputed preliminary results showed former Afghan minister of finance Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai well ahead of his rival, former Afghan minister of foreign affairs Abdullah Abdullah, but Abdullah’s supporters have said that is only because of widespread fraud.
Since fraud was alleged on both sides, the deal provides that every one of the 8 million ballots will be audited under national and international supervision over the next three or four weeks.
Neither the election nor the weekend deal has had any visible effect on security in the country, which has long seen near-daily attacks.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives near a busy market and a mosque in the east, killing dozens of people in one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since the 2001 US-led invasion to topple the Taliban.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS