The attack began at around 6:30 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) on Wednesday with a large explosion that officials said was a vehicle bomb followed by gunfire, as suspected militants battled into the complex where foreign staff and pupils were working.
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Taliban insurgents control large swathes of Afghanistan, and local armed forces are struggling to contain them, especially in the provinces of Helmand to the south and Kunduz to the north.
Kabul police told VICE News that seven were dead and more than 10 injured in the assault, which began at 5:30pm local time.
A CBS News reporter based in Kabul described the university as “under attack”.
The university was established a decade ago, and claims an estimated 1,700 students are enrolled there. University authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.
Simonetta Gola, a spokeswoman for the medical nonprofit Emergency, said the organization’s Kabul facility had received 18 patients, including five women, and of those three people were in very critical condition.
Some students jumped from second floor windows to escape the gunfire and explosions, witnesses and officials said.
The LA Times reported that Associated Press photographer Massoud Hossaini said he was in a classroom with 15 students when he heard an explosion on the southern flank of the campus. “He shot at me and shattered the glass”. Hossaini said at least two grenades were thrown into the classroom, wounding several of his classmates.
Hossaini and about nine students later managed to escape from the campus through an emergency gate.
“As we were running, I saw someone lying on the ground face down”, he told AP.
Hossaini and students with him took refuge in a house near the campus.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ended its combat mission in December 2014, but thousands of troops remain to train and assist Afghan forces, while several thousand more USA soldiers are engaged in a separate mission focusing on al Qaeda and Islamic State.
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Two university professors, an American and an Australian, were kidnapped at gunpoint by men in military uniforms in Kabul on August 7 as they traveled between the university and their homes. The whereabouts of Kevin King, a US citizen, and Timothy Weeks, an Australian, are still unknown.
