The siege began late on Monday night with a suicide auto bombing close to a building belonging to Pamlarena, part of the charity CARE International, which was then stormed by a group of armed men.
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Twenty-four people including civilians and security personnel were killed and 90 others wounded in the two suicide bombings on Monday afternoon near the gate of Defense Ministry, according to officials.
In a statement to Al Jazeera late on Tuesday, the Taliban said its fighters had targeted a secret intelligence office of “invaders”, referring to foreign forces.
The insurgents attacks on Defense Ministry and the aid agency CARE International is not the first and won’t be the last one, the depressed Rafi said, exclaiming more terrorist offensives would claim more lives in this city Kabul.
“Right after the explosion, a huge flame rose and everything was covered with smoke, and then Afghan security forces arrived and blocked the area”, Ullah said.
The Taliban have also closed in on Kunduz – the northern city they briefly seized past year in their biggest military victory since the 2001 U.S. invasion – leaving Afghan forces stretched on multiple fronts.
“The incident continued through early Tuesday morning with damages sustained to the CARE compound”.
Care International said in a statement that its staff were safely evacuated from the office.
The attack on CARE International “is the deliberate targeting of civilians and constitutes a war crime”, Amnesty said, calling for an independent probe to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter the defence ministry was the object of the first attack, while police was targeted in the second.
After the stand-off between Afghan security officials and the gunmen ended, the spokesman of the Interior Ministry Sediq Sediqqi said the security forces had killed all of the attackers in the Share Naw area.
The violence comes more than a week after 16 people were killed when militants stormed the American University in Kabul.
The Taliban’s ability to conduct coordinated deadly attacks in Kabul has mounted pressure on Ghani’s government, which has struggled to reassure the population that it can guarantee security.
Baghdad: A auto bomb exploded near a hospital in central Baghdad, killing at least seven people, police said.
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Fierce fighting continues between the Afghan army and the militants across the country, notably in the southern province of Helmand and in the vicinity of the northern city of Kunduz.
