Siege ends: Afghan troops retake army centre after deadly attack

Militants engaged hundreds of Afghan and Nato-led US and German troops in firefight.

KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN: Troops shot rebels dead at an army recruitment centre in northern Afghanistan on Sunday to end a day-long siege following two attacks by militants that killed at least 13 security personnel.

The gun battle between insurgents and security forces in Kunduz erupted after four militants armed with guns and suicide vests attacked the centre early Sunday, killing eight security personnel, officials said.

Two of the attackers were killed by security forces as the other pair occupied the facility throughout the day, officials said.

“The fighting is over,” Zemarai Bashary, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP in Kabul. He said the remaining two rebels had been gunned down by Afghan security forces, without giving further details.

Witnesses told AFP that the militants had exchanged fire with hundreds of Afghan and Nato-led US and German troops until dark.

Four police officers and four soldiers were killed in the first hours of the attack, according to Afghan officials.

An AFP reporter on the site said hundreds of Afghan security forces and US and German troops, based in Kunduz as part of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, had sealed off the area, as helicopters hovered overhead.

In the capital, Kabul, two suicide bombers targeted an army bus, killing five military personal, defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP separately. Nine other people were injured in the Kabul bombing, he said.

The vehicle was on its daily run, driving staff from the Kabul military training centre to work, when two suicide attackers armed with automatic rifles opened fire, Azimi said.

“One of the suicide attackers was shot dead but the second managed to detonate his explosives strapped to his body, and martyred five of our personnel and wounded another nine,” he said.

The incident took place on Pul-e-Charkhi road, which links the capital Kabul to Afghanistan’s eastern provinces and runs on to the Pakistani border.

Azimi also confirmed the attack in Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz province, one of the most volatile areas in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Muhahid, claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Meanwhile, one civilian was killed Sunday morning and four children were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Panjwayi district, in the troubled province of Kandahar.

“The driver of the civilian vehicle was killed and four children were wounded,” Baran Khaksar, the district chief, told AFP.

Improvised bombs are the weapons of choice for the Taliban insurgents who have been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency against the Western-backed government and its allies since they were ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion. The south and east of the war-torn country suffer the brunt of the violence.

Last week Nato said it would battle hard through the bitter Afghan winter, which usually signals a lull in fighting, keeping up pressure on the insurgency until spring.

US military leaders back the government’s plan for the Afghan police and army to assume responsibility for security by 2014, with the timetable agreed at a major Nato summit in Lisbon last month.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2010.