Children Wounded in US Embassy and School Bus Taliban Assault in Kabul
At least nine people have been killed and 23 wounded in a violent attack in the Afghan capital, Kabul, which started Tuesday and lasted for 20 hours.
The violence erupted at 1:30pm Kabul time. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were performed by insurgents who shelled and bombed the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters, as well as other targets, including an accidental high school and a school bus full of children.
The assault involved rocket-propelled grenades and explosive vests, a Kabul police spokesman said. The battle was focused around Abdul Haq square.
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Several children were wounded after a grenade hit a group of them. Hundreds of students from two schools located around the violence epicenter were in danger for hours, as parents were trying to reach them in despair, Reuters reported.
"We attacked convoys of police as they were sending reinforcements to Abdul Haq Square," Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters over the phone.
A few journalists were also wounded, including representatives of Radio Television Afghanistan and Iran's English-language Press TV.
In western Kabul, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb inside a police station, killing a police officer and wounding two. One insurgent was killed by police near the airport, but another one managed to kill a civilian at a regional police center and wounded four other people.
U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, called the event a "cowardly attack" on U.S. civilians who work to improve Afghan lives.
"There are civilians from across our government who are there with the sole purpose of assisting the people of Afghanistan in a transition toward stability, security and prosperity," she said in a statement.
On Tuesday NATO declared that it was supplying air support for Afghan forces, though Wednesday Afghan officials declared that they managed to contain the assault without much help from Western security forces.
Since the U.S.-backed Afghan army overthrew the Taliban government in 2001, the level of violence has been growing, and is now at its peak, according to multiple sources.
Tuesday’s attack was already a second big assault in Kabul in less than a month, after suicide bombers targeted the headquarters of the British Council in August, killing nine people.
