KABUL // One policeman was killed and four wounded when a group of militants, including a suicide lorry bomber, targeted a Kabul guesthouse for foreign contractors early on Monday.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Afghan interior ministry said “terrorists” used a lorry full of explosives to breach the perimeter wall of the Northgate Hotel around 1am. Three gunmen then entered the premises and started shooting.
The ministry’s deputy spokesman Najib Danish said the lorry driver was killed when he detonated the explosives. The blast in the eastern part of the Afghan capital shook the city and was followed by widespread power outages.
Abdul Rahman Rahimi, the Kabul chief of police, said all of the attackers who were on foot had been killed and that none of the hotel’s residents were harmed. A man identifying himself as Steve Jones answered the phone at the hotel and said all of the guests were safe. “We have 100 per cent accountability,” he said.
However, as daylight broke and Afghan policemen deployed at the site kept the roads leading to the hotel sealed off, questions remained as to how the insurgents were able to bring a lorry loaded with explosives into the Afghan capital.
Foreign guesthouses have long been a Taliban target. The Northgate Hotel was attacked in July, 2013, in a similar manner, with a lorry bomb breaching the gate and gunmen storming the compound. Reports at the time said that four security guards were killed before the attackers were shot dead.
The Northgate, which is east of Kabul’s international airport and near the Bagram Air Base, is typical of many prefabricated compounds that offer secure accommodation to foreigners working in the Afghan capital. According to its website, it offers much the same services as any hotel, along with high security, sniffer dogs, airport transfers and “background checks, if necessary”.
The interior ministry said police commandos surrounded the facility after arriving on the scene, but had to be careful because fuel tankers were stored in the area. They waited until dawn before trying to find the gunmen. “The operation finished at 7.30am when the terrorists were killed,” it said.
Monday’s attack followed a massive suicide bombing that struck a peaceful rally by Afghanistan’s minority ethnic Hazara community on July 23 that killed more than 80 people and wounded hundreds. The Hazaras were rallying to call for a power project to be rerouted through their impoverished region in the central highlands when the suicide bomber hit.
That attack was claimed by ISIL, which emerged in Afghanistan last year. It was the Afghan ISIL 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.
In a statement on Monday’s attack, the Taliban noted that guesthouses occupied by foreigners, especially “Americans invaders”, were frequent targets.
In May 2015, the Taliban struck the Park Palace guesthouse in central Kabul, killing 14 people, including nine foreigners. In December 2014, four people, including three members of a South African family, were killed in a Taliban attack on the compound of a US-based educational charity.
Lorry bombs, however, remain a major concern for Afghan authorities because of their potential for huge casualties, especially in Kabul’s built-up suburbs. Last August, a huge explosion in the city’s Shah Shaheed area was attributed to a lorry bomb having possibly detonated prematurely. The death toll was officially put at around 15, with hundreds wounded and a massive crater left in the middle of the residential area.
* Associated Press
