Afghanistan explosion: Taliban suicide bomber, gunmen attack parliament building in Kabul
The attack on the symbolic centre of power — one of the most brazen in years, along with a series of Taliban gains elsewhere — raises questions about the NATO-trained Afghan security forces' ability to cope and how far the militants can advance.
The attack began when a Taliban fighter driving a car loaded with explosives blew up outside parliament gates, Kabul police spokesman Ebadullah Karimi said, raising questions about how the driver got through several security checkpoints.
Six gunmen who took up positions in a building near parliament were killed after a gun battle lasting nearly two hours, he said.
"The first explosion was a car bomb outside the parliament," Sune Engel Rasmussen, a journalist in Kabul, told ABC News 24.
"[The gunmen] didn't make it inside [the parliament]. They proceeded to attack the parliament building with RPGs, rockets, and a lot of gunfire from a construction site nearby, from an empty building where they could hide behind scaffolding."
Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said all lawmakers were safe.
TV pictures showed the speaker sitting calmly and legislators leaving the building, engulfed in dust and smoke, without panicking.
The health ministry said 31 people, including five women and a child, were wounded.
Violence has spiralled in Afghanistan since the departure of most foreign forces at the end of last year.
The insurgents are pushing to take territory more than 13 years after the US-led military intervention that toppled the Taliban from power.
Politicians criticise security agencies for failing to prevent attack
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility.
"We have launched an attack on parliament as there was an important gathering to introduce the country's defence minister," he said by phone.
Lawmaker Farhad Sediqi was among several lawmakers who criticised security agencies for not preventing the attack.
"It shows a big failure in the intelligence and security departments of the government," he said.
Local media reports suggest there was another explosion in the Dahmazang area of Kabul.
The withdrawal of foreign forces and a reduction in US air strikes have allowed Taliban fighters, who ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist from 1996 to 2001, to launch several major attacks in important provinces.
The second district to fall to the Taliban on Monday was in the northern province of Kunduz.
Officials said it fell after urgently needed reinforcements failed to arrive.
The Taliban captured Dasht-e-Archi district a day after hundreds of militants fought their way to the centre of the adjacent district of Chardara.
"The Taliban managed to take it over this morning as the area has been surrounded for days," Nasruddin Saeedi, the district governor who escaped to the provincial capital, Kunduz city, told Reuters by telephone.
"There are many foreign fighters with heavy machine guns. We have asked for reinforcements, but none arrived."
Afghan soldiers were preparing a counter-attack to retake both districts, another local official said.
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