Taliban attack on US guesthouse kills Afghan girl

Taliban militants on Friday attacked
a Kabul guesthouse used by a US anti-landmine
charity, killing two people including one girl as
gunfire and explosions rocked the Afghan capital
one week before the presidential election.
A terrified group of foreigners, including several
young children, briefly took shelter behind a
generator on the street as Afghan special force
commandos fought militants for more than three
hours.
“One small Afghan girl, who was a passer-by, has
been killed. We managed to safely evacuate 31
foreign nationals from inside the building,” Kabul
police chief Mohammad Zaher told AFP.
The interior ministry spokesman said one driver had
also been killed.
Roots of Peace’s country director Sharif Osmani
confirmed its guesthouse had been attacked, adding
that three Afghans were injured and that three
people had been trapped inside before being
rescued.
The charity, based in San Francisco, has been
working in Afghanistan since 2003, running projects
to turn minefields into vineyards and orchards.
Friday’s attack is the fourth significant attack this
year in Kabul targeting foreigners or places where
foreigners congregate.
The Taliban have vowed a campaign of violence to
disrupt the polls 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 five attackers, began
with a car bomb detonated in front of the building
and continued until after dark as commandos
hunted down attackers inside the compound.
“Roots of Peace has been a valued partner for
Afghanistan, with the support of USAID,” US
Ambassador James Cunningham said on Twitter.
“We condemn this attack on an organization that
only seeks to help Afghans improve their lives and
livelihoods.”
Afghan police said two Americans, a Peruvian, a
Malaysian and an Australian were among those
rescued, and that all five attackers had been killed.
There was no immediate confirmation of
nationalities.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack,
and said the target was a foreign guesthouse that
they alleged was also used as a church.
Roots of Peace clears minefields laid during the
Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the civil war of
the 1990s and to convert the land for 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.
- Rising violence -
The assault comes just three days after Taliban
militants stormed an office of the Independent
Election Commission in Kabul, killing five people.
Last Thursday four Taliban gunmen smuggled
pistols into Kabul’s high-security Serena hotel and
shot dead nine people including four foreigners.
The victims also included Agence France-Presse
journalist Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of their
three children.
Those attacks followed the daylight shooting of a
Swedish radio journalist and an assault in January
on a Lebanese restaurant that killed 21 people
including 13 foreigners.
The vote to choose a successor to President Hamid
Karzai, barred constitutionally from seeking a third
term, will be Afghanistan’s first-ever democratic
handover of power.
But there are fears of a repeat of the bloodshed that
marred the 2004 and 2009 elections, when the
Taliban displayed their opposition to the US-backed
polls through violence.
Another bloody election would damage claims by
international donors that the expensive intervention
in Afghanistan has made progress in establishing a
functioning state.
The surge in attacks on foreigners in Kabul will also
raise fears that independent poll monitors will be
unable to work effectively, threatening the credibility
of the April 5 vote.
A disputed result would put whoever wins the
election in a weak position as Afghan security
forces take on the Taliban without NATO’s 53,000
combat troops behind them.
US-led NATO combat troops are withdrawing from
the country after 13 years of fighting the Islamist
insurgency, which erupted when the Taliban were
ousted from power after the 9/11 attacks on the
United States.