MAZAR-I-SHARIF // Troops battled yesterday to end a gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif city, after a weekend assault on an airbase in India near the border with Pakistan.
Also yesterday, a suicide bomber struck near Kabul international airport, underscoring the worsening security situation in Afghanistan.
The lethal assaults on Indian targets appear aimed at derailing Narendra Modi’s bold diplomatic outreach to Pakistan following the prime minister’s official visit to Afghanistan last month.
No group has claimed responsibility for the raid on the diplomatic mission in northern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of assaults on Indian installations in the country.
“Our clearance operation is going on near the consulate,” government spokesman Munir Farhad said.
“Since it is a residential area, we are proceeding very cautiously after overnight fighting, to avoid civilian casualties.”
An Indian official in a secure area within the diplomatic enclave, said all consulate employees were safe.
“We are being attacked,” the official said by telephone soon after the fighting erupted late Sunday evening.
The attack followed a raid over the weekend by militants on an air force base in Punjab, northern India.
Seven soldiers were confirmed dead in the raid on the Pathankot base, which triggered a 14-hour gun battle Saturday and more firing Sunday.
It was not clear yesterday whether any surviving attackers remained inside the base but troops were checking the area.
“The operation continues at the base. [With] intermittent firing ... we are moving step by step to sanitise the area,” an army spokesman in Pathankot said.
“It’s too early to say when the operation will be over.”
Officials suspect the gunmen belong to the Pakistan-based Jaish-i-Mohammed, the group that staged the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament which brought the two countries to the brink of war.
The attack was apparently aimed at undermining the fragile peace process between the nuclear-armed nations.
The spike in violence came about a week after Mr Modi paid a surprise visit to Pakistan, the first by an Indian premier in 11 years.
The visit immediately followed a whirlwind tour of Kabul, where Mr Modi inaugurated an Indian-built parliament complex and gave three Russian-made helicopters to the Afghan government.
India has been a key supporter of Kabul’s post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a “proxy war” in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan.
Pakistan has long been accused [BY WHOM?] of assisting the Taliban, especially with attacks on Indian targets in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have also stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan, a year after US-led Nato forces formally ended their combat mission in the country.
“A suicide bomber in a Toyota sedan detonated his vehicle ... near Kabul airport” on yesterday, said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.
“Fortunately only the attacker was killed,” he added, clarifying an earlier statement that the bomber was on foot.
The latest unrest coincides with a renewed international push to revive peace talks with the resurgent militant movement.
On January 11, Afghanistan and Pakistan are to hold a first round of dialogue also involving the United States and China to try to lay out a comprehensive road map for peace.
Pakistan, which wields considerable influence over the Afghan Taliban, hosted a milestone first round of talks in July. But the negotiations stalled when the insurgents belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar.
The attack on the consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif was the latest on high-profile Indian targets in Afghanistan.
In 2008, a car bomb at the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 60 people and the facility was again hit by a suicide strike in 2009.
Nine civilians, including seven children, were killed in August 2013 when suicide bombers targeted the Indian consulate in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
* Agence France-Presse
