In September 2012, Taliban militants, armed with suicide vests, guns and rockets, and wearing United States uniforms, breached the outer wall of Camp Bastion, a heavily fortified airfield in southern Helmand province.
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According to the BBC, the Afghan army says it has now gained back control of the airport.
Correspondents say the attack is a huge security failure because the attackers were able to smuggle weapons into an area supposed to have been made secure by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
One security official said the assailants held some civilians as “human shields”, which had complicated their clearance operation.
“The fighting started around 6:00 pm (Tuesday) and intensified over the night”, 30-year-old university student Izatullah, who lives inside the complex, said.
The Taliban took responsibility for the attack.
At least 35 people were injured in the attack, the Ministry of Defence said.
The militant organisation also posted a picture on their website of the militants, it said, were involved in the brazen attack.
The face of one of them is obscured with blue ink for unknown reasons.
The insurgents are regularly known to exaggerate battlefield claims.
Samim Kharpalwak is the Kandahar governor’s spokesman.
The events Wednesday come at a precarious time for Afghanistan. “This is the problem”.
“Nine insurgents have been killed, one other is injured and another one is still holding up against our forces”, the ministry said.
The development stemmed from a string of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral meetings in Islamabad involving Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and top American and Chinese officials.
“The democratically elected government in Afghanistan is the only legitimate authority in the country in accordance with its unanimously-adopted constitution”. They added Pakistan wants an worldwide presence in the entire process, because of the long history of mistrust and suspicions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The fall of the city prompted the U.S. to revise its withdrawal plan, with President Barack Obama announcing that thousands of troops will remain in Afghanistan at least till the end of his term in 2017. “No real victories can be won and sustained when Afghans are fighting Afghans”, said Sampler quoting Blinken.
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Pakistan, which has historically supported the Afghan Taliban and wields considerable influence over the insurgents, hosted a milestone first round of peace negotiations in July.
