December 19, 2010
Militants Kill Afghan Soldiers in 2 Attacks
By RAY RIVERA and SANGAR RAHIMI
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Insurgents intensified pressure on Afghan security forces on Sunday, killing five Afghan Army training officers in a suicide attack in Kabul and attacking an army recruiting center in the northern city of Kunduz. At least four Afghan soldiers and four police officers were killed in the Kunduz assault in a firefight that lasted more than 12 hours, government officials said.
In the Kabul attack, two insurgents armed with AK-47s and grenades opened fire on a bus carrying the army trainers around 8:10 a.m. One of the attackers ran into the bus and blew himself up, killing five officers and wounding nine others, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The attack occurred on the main road between Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad. The road has been the site of many similar attacks on NATO vehicles and supply trucks on their way to nearby coalition and Afghan military bases, but the bombing broke pace with what had been a relatively calm year in the capital.
Afghan National Army units from the 201st Corps sealed off the blast site after the attack and shot dead a second attacker in what witnesses said was a 45-minute firefight.
In Kunduz, a group of insurgents on motorcycles stormed the front gate of an Afghan National Army recruitment center in the heart of the city of Kunduz around 6 a.m. on Sunday, according to an army officer at the scene.
The attackers shot and killed the gate security guards and entered the main courtyard, where two of them blew themselves up, the officer said. A fierce firefight erupted with the remaining insurgents as about 200 American and Afghan Army forces cordoned off the area and pounded the compound with heavy machinegun fire. The gunfire finally stopped around 6:30 p.m. as government forces took control of the building, local officials said.
"The operation ended just now," Gen. Abdul Rahman Aqtash, the deputy police chief of Kunduz Province, said moments after gunfire stopped. "We took control of the building. We cleared the building. We found the bullet-riddled bodies of two suicide bombers inside the building." Officials said at least four Afghan soldiers and four police officers had been killed in the fighting. There were no immediate reports on civilian casualties.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks and promised a bloody year in 2011.
"We will carry out more attacks in the future," a Taliban spokesman, Zabiulla Mjahid, said by telephone, adding that "2011 will be a devastating year for both of us."
President Hamid Karzai called the attacks a "big and unforgivable crime."
"Those who are committing such attacks are the enemies of the people of Afghanistan who don't want our security forces to get strong," he said in a statement.
Just a day before the attacks, the Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany paid a surprise visit to Kunduz, where most of the German troops in Afghanistan are based. Germany has the third-largest contingent of forces in the country after the United States and Britain. Because of the deteriorating situation, Mrs. Merkel was confined to barracks.
Her visit came amid growing differences inside her coalition government over when to begin withdrawing the 4,700 German troops serving in the country. The police officers' deaths in Kunduz added to what has been a succession of deadly years for the Afghan National Police. Last solar year, which began March 21, the police lost 1,265 officers, mostly to insurgent attacks, said Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. The police are on pace for the same number of casualties this year, ministry figures show.
Gen. Josef Blotz, chief spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, called the high police casualty rate a clear "testament that the Afghan forces do sacrifice a lot for their country."
By comparison, about 282 Afghan soldiers were killed in 2009. Statistics for this year were not available on Sunday.
Coalition casualties also continued to rise on Sunday as two service members were killed by improvised explosive devices. No details on their nationalities were immediately released. A tally by the Web site icasualties.org before Sunday's deaths showed that NATO and American forces had lost 699 troops since January in what has been the deadliest year of the war.
The Kunduz attack comes amid a shift in violence in the country. In discussing the White House overview of United States strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan released last week, officials claimed progress in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency, but acknowledged flare-ups elsewhere in Afghanistan.