Taliban spring shocks Kabul

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A Nato soldier stands guard at the scene of an attack by Taliban militants in Kabul on Sunday.

Afghanistan’s Taliban said they launched a spri-ng offensive on Sunday with multiple attacks against Western embass-ies in the central diplomatic area and at Parliament in Kabul, with heavy explosions, rockets and gunfire rattling the city. The Taliban also launched attacks in at least two Afghan provinces.
The assault, one of the most serious on the capital since US-backed Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power in 2001, highlighted the ability of militants to strike the heavily guarded diplomatic zone even after more than 10 years of war.
[No Indian target was attacked. An external affairs ministry statement issued in New Delhi said all Indian citizens were safe.]
“These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters. [A Taliban statement, according to NYT, added: “It is also a message to those foreign commanders who claim that the Taliban have lost their momentum. We have just showed that we are here and we can stage an attack whenever we want.”]
Heavy fighting erupted again more than five hours after the Taliban first struck. The Taliban said the main targets were the German and British embassies and the headquarters of Afghanistan’s Nato-led force. Several Afghan members of Parliament joined security forces repelling attackers from a roof near the Parliament.
The coordinated attack is bound to intensify worry in the run-up to the planned withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014. A Taliban spokesman told Reuters later that the attacks were retaliation for Quran burnings, the US urination video and the Kandahar shooting massacre.
Large explosions rattled the diplomatic sector of Kabul. Heavy gunfire could be heard from many directions as Afghan security forces tried to repel Taliban fighters. The Taliban said their fighters were positioned on the rooftop of a tall building in the heart of Kabul.
Taliban fighters also launched assaults in at least two provinces, a spokesman for the insurgents said. The Afghan interior ministry said initial intelligence on the wave of attacks across the country pointed to involvement of the Haqqani network, allied with the Taliban. If the Haqqanis were involved, that is likely to hurt already strained ties between strategic allies the US and Pakistan. “It’s too early to say, but the initial findings show the Haqqanis were involved,” Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told Reuters.
The Taliban said in a statement that “tens of fighters”, armed with heavy and light weapons, and some wearing suicide-bomb vests, were involved. The Kabul police said three suicide bombers were killed and two were still resisting on the outskirts of the capital.
In Paktia province in the east, blasts and machine gun rounds obliterated the front of a three-storey pink building occupied by insurgents who used it to attack a provincial police HQ.
The assault in Kabul appeared to repeat the tactics of an attack last September when insurgents entered construction sites to use them as positions for rocket and gun attacks. Taliban spokesman Mujahid said it had been easy to bring fighters into Kabul, and they had had inside help to move heavy weapons into place. He did not elaborate.
Attackers fired an RPG that landed just outside the front gate of a house used by British diplomats in the city centre, a Reuters witness said. British embassy sources said staff were in a lockdown. Two rockets hit a British embassy guard tower near the Reuters office. Fighting was going on at some facilities of Nato’s ISAF and near the US, Russian and German embassies, ISAF said via Twitter.
An ISAF spokesman said there were no reports of casualties in the attacks on possibly seven locations in Kabul, and the US embassy said in a statement all its staff were safe.
Three rockets hit a supermarket popular with foreigners near the German embassy, Reuters witnesses said.
Attackers also fired rockets at the Parliament building and at the Russian embassy, a Parliament spokesman said. Most MPs had left the building before it came under attack, said a legislator. However, one of several who fought back from a roof, Naeem Hameedzai, told Reuters: “I’m the representative of my people and I have to defend them.”
In Jalalabad, a Reuters witness said Taliban attacked a foreign force base near a school. One Taliban insurgent was killed, another blew himself up and a third was captured. A blast also went off near the airport in Jalalabad, a Reuters witness said.