A high-security complex housing foreign workers in Kabul came under attack Wednesday evening when a car bomb exploded outside, followed by gunfire and grenade attacks.
Four Taliban assailants including a suicide bomber died in the failed attack on the Green Village, the area in the eastern part of the Afghan capital home to hundreds of United Nations staff, security contractors and a few remaining CIA personnel.
Hashmat Stanikzai, a Kabul police spokesman, confirmed that a vehicle full of explosives had detonated in the Pol-e Charkhi area, at the gate of Green Village, and that the security forces had killed the remaining three attackers. He said that no security forces or civilians had been killed, but emphasised that he was providing “temporary details”.
A senior UN official who was present at the time of the attack said he heard three, possibly four “very, very loud explosions” over the course of 30 minutes. The first explosion, which occurred around 9pm local time, was a suicide bomber.
“There was a car that entered the first gate at the Green Village, that was a suicide car,” said the UN official. Following the explosion, gunfire erupted and lasted for “at least 20 minutes”, in which three other attackers were killed.
“People are alarmed,” the official said. “For many people it’s the first experience of a direct personal attack.”
In a phone interview, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, took responsibility for the attack. “The target was the Green Village because foreigners use the Green Village as a safe house,” he said.
The Green Village lies several kilometres to the east of downtown Kabul, but that has not dissuaded militants from attacking the heavily fortified complex in the past. Wednesday’s attack was the third on the Green Village in as many years.
The attack comes after a string of recent assaults in Kabul, which have helped intensify a months-long Taliban offensive following the beginning of the withdrawal of foreign troops and the recent presidential elections.
On Tuesday, a truck bomb killed two members of the Afghan security forces at a base for foreign forces, also in the Pol-e Charkhi area. And on Sunday, a prominent female MP, Shukria Barakzai, had a close brush with a suicide attacker on her way to parliament. Three civilians were killed and 20 wounded in the attack, while Barakzai was hospitalised.
The attack on the Green Village ended an hour after it started. At 11pm, UN staff were permitted to leave the Green Village bunkers.
