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Dark Day for UN

October 28, 2009
KABUL (AFP) – Taliban suicide gunmen stormed a UN guesthouse in Kabul on October 28, killing nine people in an attack the Islamist militia said signalled a bloody countdown to new Afghan elections next week.

President Hamid Karzai ordered an urgent security upgrade for international organisations after the rampage, which left at least five expatriate UN staff dead in the worst assault on the world body's Afghanistan mission since 2001.

A defence ministry official said the raid was the work of Pakistani Taliban dressed as police who struck the UN-approved Bekhtar Guesthouse before dawn.

Witnesses said the militants sprayed the hostel with gunfire and detonated grenades before blowing themselves up.

"This attack will not, I repeat, will not deter the UN from continuing all its work to reconstruct a war-torn country and to build a better future for all Afghans," head of mission Kai Eide said.

Five of the dead were confirmed to be foreign UN staff but the body of a sixth was yet to be identified pending forensic examinations, said UN spokesman Adrian Edwards after earlier giving the toll as six international staffers.

Another nine staff were wounded, including some seriously, Edwards said. He was unable to confirm the nationalities of the casualties. The American embassy identified one as a US citizen.

Police said a search of the hostel had turned up a charred, unidentified body in one of the rooms. Two security personnel were also killed, bringing the total death toll to nine plus the three gunmen.

Militants also fired rockets at the luxury Serena Hotel but no casualties were reported.

Officials said three gunmen entered the hostel in Kabul's Shar-e-Now district around dawn. Flames and heavy black smoke spewed into the sky as the security services closed off roads.

An American contractor staying at the hostel said two of the dead were women and described scenes of panic during a more than two-hour siege.

"One suicide bomber killed one of the women just as she was trying to get through the fire. He blew himself up," John Christopher Turner told reporters.

Another woman was overcome by smoke from the explosions.

"The smoke was just choking... (She) was crying, yelling: 'I am dying'," said Turner, 62, from Kansas. "I barely made it myself."

Turner said he himself opened fire with a rifle as many guests took shelter in a washroom before escaping through the back of the building.

"I just guarded the people in the washroom and just returned fire really at nothing but just to let them know.

"Everybody got inside the washroom and after a while when it slowed down I got them across the street to another building."

Captain Daoud Safi, an officer in the Afghan defence ministry, captured the raid's bloody conclusion on his camera phone.

"They were Pakistani students who came here for suicide training," said Safi as he showed grainy footage of the mangled bodies dressed in police uniforms.

Although a police commander said the attackers had been shot dead, one witness said it was clear they had detonated themselves.

"There were intestines everywhere, legs were blown off," said the woman.

The new bloodshed came with tensions rising in Afghanistan ahead of the scheduled presidential run-off on November 7 between Karzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, following a fraud-tainted first round in August.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said the militia, driven from power in a US-led invasion eight years ago, was behind the raid.

"This is the first step, as we have warned that we will disrupt the second round of the elections," he told AFP.

The Taliban have called for a boycott of the ballot, threatening a repeat of the violent intimidation they waged ahead of the August election.

The attack came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited neighbouring Pakistan, seeking to bolster the nuclear-armed state on the frontlines of the struggle against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

The threat was laid bare as a car bomb ripped through a bazaar in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing 92 people.

US President Barack Obama has vowed to find a combined approach to address the violent unrest in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After an exhaustive review of war strategy, Obama may select a plan to secure 10 major Afghan population centres rather than going for an all-out military push, the New York Times reported.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Obama would meet the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday in a sign he was "getting, certainly, toward the end" of the review.

Darkest day for UN as Taliban kill 9 at Kabul hostel
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091028/wl_afp/afghanistanunrestvote6thleadwrap_20091028160624
by Sardar Ahmad Sardar Ahmad
October 28, 2009


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