All British embassy staff in Kabul have been “accounted for” amid explosions and heavy gunfire in the diplomatic quarter of the Afghan capital, the Foreign Office said in a statement on Sunday. “We can confirm that there is an ongoing incident in the diplomatic area of Kabul. We are in close contact with the embassy, all staff are accounted for,” it said, while Foreign Office sources added that there had been no injuries. Suicide bombers struck across Afghanistan on Sunday in coordinated attacks claimed by Taliban insurgents as the start of a spring offensive.
The German and Japanese embassy compounds were reported hit as militants attacked the city’s diplomatic enclave and tried to storm parliament — sparking a gun battle in which lawmakers and bodyguards fired back from the rooftop. A spokeswoman of the German embassy told AFP that there was “smaller damage to the property”, but no one had been injured.
The embassies of the United States and Britain were also targeted, the spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, General Carsten Jacobson, said.
