Taliban militants detonated explosives and fired rockets in an attempted attack on the Afghan Parliament as lawmakers were preparing to vote on a new defense minister Monday.
A large car bomb exploded near the outer wall of the parliament compound, sending a thick plume of smoke into the sky. Six Taliban fighters then tried to storm inside, said police spokesman Ebadullah Karimi.
Afghan security forces managed to fend off the attackers, who then moved into nearby building, firing rockets and AK-47 machine guns. All six attackers were killed in the ensuing firefight, Karimi said.
Lawmakers told the Afghan broadcaster Tolo TV that they and their colleagues were meeting when a huge explosion blew out windows in the building and gunshots rang out. Government officials ran out of the building, they said.
The members of parliament had assembled for a general meeting at which a confidence vote on Mohammad Masoom Stanikzai, the government’s nominee for defense minister, was to be held.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said on his Twitter account that the group chose to target the parliament on the day of the defense minister vote.
Afghanistan is bracing for an upsurge in violence as spring begins with militants associating themselves with Islamic State.
Islamic State fighters have reportedly attacked a Taliban convoy in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province, killing at least 10 militants.
Many researchers believe it is the beginning of a long and violent battle for Afghanistan’s control.
Isis claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Saturday, which appears to be the first major attack in Afghanistan by insurgents aligning themselves with the group which has been wreaking havoc across Syria and Iraq.
Siegfried O. Wolf, a South Asia researcher at the University of Heidelberg, believes the ISIS-Taliban battle could be “extremely dangerous for Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
The Afghan Taliban have sent a letter to Islamic State’s leader urging the rival jihadist group to stop recruiting in Afghanistan, saying there is room for only “one flag, one leadership” in their fight to re-establish strict Islamist rule.
The missive comes amid heavy fighting this week in eastern Afghanistan between the Taliban and breakaway factions who now swear allegiance to Islamic State.
The death of a South African father and his two teenage children come in the wake of a secret order that was signed by president Barack Obama just last week to strengthen the combat role of American troops in Afghanistan.
Insurgents have targeted foreign guesthouses, embassy vehicles, US troops and a female member of parliament in recent weeks.
Werner Groenewald, 46, his son Jean-Pierre, 17, and daughter Rode, 15, were killed in Saturday’s attack on the compound of Partnership in Academics and Development (PAD), a small California-based education group.
Obama has secretly signed an order that expands the United States’ direct combat role in Afghanistan throughout 2015, the New York Times reported.
The secret order permits American forces to continue to battle the Taliban and other militants that pose a threat to either the Afghan government or US personnel.
According to the Times, US jets, bombers, and drones will be able to aid ground troops – be they Afghan or US forces – in whatever mission they undertake.
This marks a significant expansion of America’s role in Afghanistan in 2015. The new revelation that the U.S. is quietly planning to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan above publicly pledged levels is just the latest indication that the end of the war is, in fact, nowhere near.
Meanwhile, new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has a much softer position on the US presence in his country compared to his predecessor Hamid Karzai.
Ghani removed restrictions against US airstrikes and joint raids that were implemented by Karzai.
Werner’s wife Hannelie, a doctor, was working at a hospital when the attack began, Hannelie’s sister Riana du Plessis, who is acting as family spokeswoman, told AFP.
Explosions and gunfire erupted for three hours as Afghan elite commandos battled three militants who were eventually killed.
“Their house was burned down,” Ms du Plessis said, speaking in South Africa. “Hannelie went back there this morning to try to recover some of their goods, but there was nothing to recover.
“She lost everything — her children, her husband, her cats, her dogs.” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed on Twitter that the compound was that of a secret Christian missionary group.
According to South African sources the Groenewalds recieved a warning ahead of the attack. The three victims suffered immensely, as they bled to death while being suffocated, the source said.
Werner was previously a Christian pastor in Pretoria, while Hannelie is a qualified doctor who answered the call “to help the sick in Afghanistan”.
Kabul police chief General Zahir Zahir stepped down on Sunday shortly after he confirmed the attack.
The killing of the Groenewald family occured just days ahead of a NATO donor meeting in Brussels and London.
President Ashraf Ghani, who came to power in September after signing a power-sharing deal with his poll rival Abdullah Abdullah.
Ghani was due to give a televised address on Sunday evening to announce that a deal had been reached over cabinet positions in the new government.
Ghani and Abdullah will fly to Brussels on Monday for NATO meetings, and to London on Wednesday for a donor conference designed to showcase the “national unity government” and demonstrate continuing international support for Afghanistan.
American news sources did not disclose the nationality of the Groenewalds.
A suicide car bomber hit a convoy of NATO forces near the Kabul international airport early on Tuesday, the national news agency Khaama Press has reported.
The report said, citing local security officials, that the suicide bomber detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) near the US embassy on the road leading to the airport.
According to preliminary reports, “at least 13 people were killed or injured after the blast.” Eyewitnesses said several bodies of civilians were left on the street following the attack.
The blast scene has been cordoned off by security officials.
A Taliban militants group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Afghan officials investigating the wreckage for clues as to the bombing
A female bomber killed 12 people in Kabul on Tuesday in the deadliest single attack over an anti-Islam US film that again sparked furious protests across the Muslim world.
The Kabul bombing brings to more than 30 the number of people who have been killed in a violent backlash over a YouTube trailer for the film, “Innocence of Muslims”, believed to have been produced by a small group of extremist Christians, which depicts the Prophet Mohammed as a thuggish womanizer.
Another potentially explosive publication is also due to hit news stands in France Wednesday after the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo confirmed that its next edition contains several cartoons which feature caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
The editor of the weekly, originally a cartoonist who uses the name Charb, said the images would “shock those who will want to be shocked”.
In Afghanistan, Hezb-i-Islami, the second largest insurgent group after the Taliban who have been fighting US-led troops and the government for 10 years, claimed the attack and said it was to avenge the “insult” of the film.
“The bombing was in retaliation for the insult to our Prophet,” spokesman Zubair Sidiqi told AFP in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.
Security officials said nine foreigners including South Africans were among those killed on a major highway leading to Kabul airport when the bomber blew up her station wagon alongside a minivan carrying foreign workers.
Taliban fighters last week stormed a British-run airfield, killing two US Marines and destroying six US fighter jets in another act of vengeance.
A week of angry violent protests outside US embassies and other American symbols in at least 20 countries have left some 19 people dead, including the American ambassador to Libya and three other US diplomats in Benghazi.
In Lebanon, the head of Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, which is blacklisted in the United States as a terrorist organisation, made a rare public appearance to warn of “very dangerous” repercussions if the entire film is released.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets of southern Beirut to denounce the film at the request of Nasrallah, who has called for a week of protests over the film, describing it as the “worst attack ever on Islam”.
“The US must understand that releasing the entire film will have dangerous, very dangerous, repercussions around the world,” he told the rally.
Al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa urged Muslims to storm US embassies and kill American envoys in Muslim countries to protest the film, monitoring group IntelCenter said.
The film-maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egyptian Copt and fraudster who was sentenced to 21 months in prison in the United States in June 2010, has not been seen since Saturday when he was questioned.
The risks now facing those involved in the production of the film were underlined when a Salafist cleric in Egypt called Monday for the deaths of all those involved in its making.
Before dawn on Monday, officers from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department escorted four members of Nakoula’s family to join him in hiding.
Meanwhile Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered that seven US-based Egyptian Copts be tried over their role in the film, accusing them of “insulting the Islamic religion, insulting the Prophet (Mohammed) and inciting sectarian strife”.
In Pakistan, two protesters died after demonstrating against the film in the northwest, close to the Afghan border, and outside the US consulate in Karachi.
Police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of more than 2,000 protesters trying to reach the US consulate in the city of Peshawar, chanting anti-US slogans and burning the Stars and Stripes flag.
In Indian Kashmir hundreds of Muslims clashed with security forces and burnt a police vehicle.
Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan blocked access to YouTube, following the video-sharing website’s failure to take down the anti-Islam film. Saudi Arabia and Russia may also follow suit.
Google, which owns YouTube, has also barred access to the film in Egypt, India, Indonesia, Libya and Malaysia.
Violent demonstrations have spread this week after police on Friday battled to defend US missions from mobs in Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen.
In east Jerusalen hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli border police, hurling stones and firebombs at a checkpoint.
In Europe calls surfaced Tuesday on social networks for Muslims in France to defy an official ban and hold fresh protests over the anti-Islam film.
The messages on Twitter and other sites called for demonstrations to be held Saturday in Paris, Marseille and other major cities, a week after police in the capital arrested 150 people for taking part in a rowdy protest near the US embassy.
The United States has deployed counter-terror Marine units to Libya to protect its embassy in Tripoli and stationed two destroyers off the North African coast.
On September 11, its consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi came under sustained attack, killing four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens. – AFP
Eight South Africans died in a suicide bomb attack which killed 12 in Kabul in Afghanistan on Tuesday morning, the foreign ministry said.
“Our mission in Islamabad in Pakistan, which is also accredited in Afghanistan, has informed us that eight South Africans were among the dead in the explosion which occurred in Kabul early this morning,” foreign affairs spokesman Nelson Kgwete told AFP.
“We have received the names of the deceased and are working on establishing contact with families and next-of-kin,” said Nelson Kgwete.
“They worked for a private aviation company operating in the country.”
The SA High Commission in Islamabad, Pakistan, was informed on Tuesday morning that eight South Africans were killed in the attack.
Kgwete said the department expressed its condolences to the friends and families of the deceased and that they would be given assistance.
Tuesday’s attack by a woman suicide bomber was the deadliest single attack claimed to avenge a US film that has sparked a week of bloody protests across the Muslim world.
More than 30 people have now been killed in the violent backlash over a YouTube trailer for the film “Innocence of Muslims”. – Sapa
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