Afghan soldiers at the scene of attack on a guesthouse by Taliban gunmen in Kabul. PHOTO: AFP
A girl was killed and one guard injured in a Taliban suicide attack on Friday on a Kabul guesthouse used by an anti-landmine aid group, Afghan officials said.
"One small girl was martyred in the first explosion, one guard was injured," Deputy Interior Ministry Mohammad Ayoub Salangi said on his Twitter account.
يك دختر خورد خوردسن در انفجار اول در كوچه شهيد يك كارد زخمي كرديده
— General Salangi (@MASalangi) March 28, 2014
Several foreigners were evacuated from the building in the west of the city, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
It is the fourth significant attack this year in the Afghan capital targeting foreigners or places where foreigners congregate.
The Taliban have vowed a campaign of violence to disrupt the ballot on April 5, urging their fighters to attack polling staff, voters and security forces in the run-up to election day.
Friday's assault, involving four attackers, began when they detonated a car bomb in front of the building, according to Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Ayoub Salangi.
"It is our guesthouse under attack," Roots of Peace country director Sharif Osmani told AFP.
"Three Afghans are injured and three other people are inside."
Sayed Gul Agha Hashemi, the head of Kabul police's criminal investigation branch, told AFP: "The police have now occupied the roof and are trying to clear the building of the terrorists."
An AFP photographer at the scene saw a number of foreigners being escorted from the building by security forces.
Kabul Police chief Mohammad Zaher said when the attack began around 4 pm (1200 GMT) there were six foreigners inside the building.
Zaher told AFP they were two Americans, a Peruvian, a Malaysian, an Australian and a guard he described as "African".
There was no immediate confirmation of these nationalities.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and said the target was a foreign guesthouse they alleged was also used as a church.
Roots of Peace has been working in Afghanistan, one of the world's most heavily-mined countries, since 2003.
They try to clear minefields laid during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the civil war of the 1990s and convert the land to agricultural use.
Since 1989, when Soviet forces left Afghanistan, more than 4,000 people have been killed and 17,000 injured by mines, according to an estimate by the UN's Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan.
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The response by Afghan Security forces is much better than our security forces.
now get ready for blame game....