Afghanistan said its forces regained control of Kabul on Monday after killing Taliban militants — some disguised as women in burqas — who launched one of the biggest attacks on the capital in a decade of war.
A total of 47 people were killed and some 65 wounded in Kabul and three neighbouring provinces where government and military targets also came under attack, Interior Minister Bismillah Mohammadi told a news conference.
“A couple of the insurgents in Kabul were wearing burqas and carrying flowers” before opening fire, he said.
“Once again, like in the past, all the insurgents were humiliated and were killed by the Afghan security forces.”
Kabul was hit by a wave of attacks in three areas Sunday, with embassies and foreign military bases coming under fire in what the Taliban said was the start of its spring offensive.
Afghan security forces took the lead in countering the assault, but a spokesman for NATO forces in the country said they had provided air support in response to requests from the Afghans.
The attacks raise fears over the precarious security situation in Afghanistan as NATO prepares to withdraw its 130,000 troops by the end of 2014 and hand responsibility for security to Afghan forces.
But NATO was quick to hail the performance of the Afghans.
“I am enormously proud of how quickly Afghan security forces responded to today’s attacks in Kabul,” said General John Allen, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
“They were on scene immediately, well-led and well-coordinated. They integrated their efforts, helped protect their fellow citizens and largely kept the insurgents contained.”
However, the fact that so many militants had managed to make it through Kabul’s so-called “Ring of Steel” checkpoints and attack high value targets in the heart of the capital has raised questions about lapses in security.
“That they did manage to pull off simultaneous complex attacks shows quite a level of sophistication in preventing detection… so that would be a failure in intelligence,” said Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts’ Network.
“But having said that, in a big bustling city like Kabul it is incredibly difficult to stop this type of attack,” she said.
US Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the ability of Afghan security forces to respond to the attacks was a “clear sign of progress”, while ISAF labelled the attacks “largely ineffective”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Crocker to discuss the “cowardly” attacks, the State Department said, and asked him to convey to President Hamid Karzai her appreciation for the “swift and effective response” of Afghan forces.
The US, British, German and Japanese embassy compounds came under fire as militants attacked the city’s diplomatic enclave and tried to storm parliament, sparking a gun battle as lawmakers and bodyguards fired back from the rooftop.
Outside the capital, militants attacked government buildings in Logar province, the airport in Jalalabad, and a police facility in the town of Gardez in Paktya province.
One militant in Logar escaped and had resumed fighting from a new position in the capital Pul-i-Alam, provincial police chief Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Liwanai told AFP.
“There’s one attacker who managed to escape and he is now in another building firing at us,” he said.
