KABUL // A brazen, hours-long militant attack on the American University of Afghanistan ended early Thursday after at least 12 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the assault on the sprawling campus on Kabul’s outskirts, a government spokesman said.
The attack underscored how despite efforts by the Afghan authorities to improve security, militants were still able to stage large-scale attacks, including in the country’s capital, Kabul.
The dead included seven students, according to Sediq Sediqqi, an interior ministry spokesman. Three police officers and two security guards were also killed.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the assault but suspicion is likely to fall on the Taliban. The group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told media that the Taliban are investigating.
“Most of the dead were killed by gunshots near the windows of their classrooms,” Mr Sediqqi said. The ministry said that 36 people were wounded, including nine police officers.
The assault began just before 7pm on Wednesday — a time when hundreds of students typically attend evening classes — with a suicide car bombing at the university’s entrance.
The blast breached the security walls and allowed two other terrorists, beside the driver of the vehicle, to enter the campus, Mr Sediqqi said.
They were armed with grenades and automatic weapons. The siege of the university lasted almost nine hours, before police killed the two assailants around 3.30am (2.30am UAE), he said.
More than 200 people, mostly students who had been trapped in university buildings were rescued by special police units. Kabul police chief, Abdul Rahman Rahimi, said earlier that one foreign teacher was among the wounded.
President Ashraf Ghani’s visited some of the wounded in hospital on Thursday morning and extended condolences to the victims’ families, his office said.
Mr Ghani condemned the assault as an “attack on education institutions and public places” and said it would “strength our goal to eliminate the roots of terrorism”.
The university, located on the western edge of Kabul, was established in 2006 to offer liberal arts courses modelled on the US system, and has more than 1,000 students currently enrolled.
It was not clear what plans the university has for enhanced security or when it would reopen.
Dejan Panic, the programme director at Kabul’s Emergency Hospital, said 18 people wounded in the attack, including five women, had been admitted to the hospital. He said three were seriously wounded, probably from automatic gunfire.
Massoud Hossaini, a photographer, was in a classroom with 15 other students when he heard an explosion on the south side of the campus.
“I went to the window to see what was going on, and I saw a person in normal clothes outside. He shot at me and shattered the glass,” Mr Hossaini said, adding that he fell on the glass and cut his hands.
The students then barricaded themselves inside the classroom, pushing chairs and desks against the door, and staying on the floor. Mr Hossaini said at least two grenades were thrown into the classroom, wounding several of his classmates.
Mr Hossaini and nine students later managed to escape from the campus through an emergency gate.
“As we were running, I saw someone lying on the ground face down, they looked like they had been shot in the back,” he said.
Mr Hossaini and the other students took refuge in a residential house near the campus, and were later safely evacuated by Afghan security forces.
The Pentagon said US military advisers were on the ground with Afghan security forces at the university. Spokesman Adam Stump said the forces had been embedded with the Afghan units.
The attack came two weeks after two university staff, an American and an Australian, were kidnapped from their car by unknown gunmen driving home from the campus after evening classes. Their abductors were men dressed in Afghan military uniforms, officials had said.
The whereabouts of the American and the Australian, whose names have not been released, remain unknown.
The US state department condemned what it called “an attack on the future of Afghanistan”.
The Taliban have been fighting to overthrow the Kabul government for 15 years, and regard foreign civilians as legitimate targets.
Last month, Kabul was shaken by a massive suicide bombing that struck a peaceful rally by Afghanistan’s minority ethnic Hazara community, killing more than 80 people and wounding hundreds.
That attack was claimed by ISIL, which emerged last year in Afghanistan as an affiliate of the militant group fighting in Iraq and Syria. It was the ISIL Afghan branch’s first assault in Kabul and the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban regime in 2001.
* Associated Press
