Kabul - Heavy explosions, rockets and gunfire rattled Kabul on Sunday as Afghanistan's Taliban launched a “spring offensive” with multiple attacks targeting Western embassies, the Nato force's headquarters and the parliament building.
The assault, one of the most serious on the capital since US-backed Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power in 2001, highlighted the ability of militants to strike the heavily guarded diplomatic zone even after more than 10 years of war.
It was also another election-year setback in Afghanistan for US President Barack Obama, who wants to present the long campaign against the Taliban as a success before the departure of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
“These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters.
He said the onslaught was revenge for a series of incidents involving American troops in Afghanistan - including the burning of Qur'ans at a Nato base and the massacre of 17 civilians by a US soldier - and vowed that there would be more such attacks.
Fighting was still raging after nightfall, more than five hours after the Taliban first struck.
The Taliban said the main targets were the German and British embassies and the headquarters of the Nato-led force. Several Afghan members of parliament joined security forces repelling attackers from a roof near the parliament.
Large explosions shook the diplomatic sector of Kabul. Billows of black smoke rose from embassies while rocket-propelled grenades whizzed overhead.
Heavy gunfire could be heard from many directions as Afghan security forces tried to repel Taliban fighters.
Taliban fighters, some of them dressed in women's head-to-toe covering burqas, also launched simultaneous assaults in three other provinces of Afghanistan.
In the eastern city of Jalalabad, they attacked a foreign force base near a school and a blast went off near the airport.
The Ministry of Interior said 19 insurgents, including suicide bombers, died in the encounters across the country and two were captured. Fourteen police officers and nine civilians were wounded.
The attacks in Kabul come a month before a Nato summit at which the United States and its allies are supposed to put finishing touches on plans for transition to Afghan security control, and days before a meeting of defence and foreign ministers in Brussels to prepare for the Chicago summit.
Afghan security forces apparently failed to learn lessons from a similar operation in Kabul last September in which when insurgents entered construction sites to use them as positions for rocket and gun attacks.
The latest attack came just as Western forces prepare to leave as part of a plan to hand over responsibilities to the Afghan forces by 2014.
That may prompt some to draw comparisons with the 1968 Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. There are major differences in the scale and length of the events and casualties but the assault may still challenge assertions that America is winning.
Witnesses said insurgents entered a multi-storey construction site overlooking the diplomatic triangle and behind a supermarket. There they unleashed rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, protected from the view of security forces by green protective netting wrapped around the skeleton of the building.
Sunday's attack took place hours after dozens of Islamist militants stormed a prison in neighbouring Pakistan in the dead of night and freed nearly 400 inmates, including one on death row for trying to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf.
Pakistan's Taliban movement, which is close to al-Qaeda, said it was behind the brazen assault by militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.
Pakistan's Taliban are closely linked with their Afghan counterparts. They move back and forth across the unmarked border, exchange intelligence, and provide shelter for each other in a region Obama has described as “the most dangerous place in the world”.
Pakistan's Taliban have said in recent months they would boost cooperation with the Afghan Taliban in their fight against US-led Nato forces.
Both the attacks in Afghanistan and the jailbreak in Pakistan underscore Pakistan's failure to tackle militancy on both sides of the border eleven years after joining the US-led campaign against Islamist militancy. - Reuters