American University of Afghanistan+ has ended, a government spokesman said on Thursday, after at least 10 people were killed and scores were wounded.
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Earlier this month one US and one Australian professor working at the American University were kidnapped by gunmen.
The university website has not yet posted a response to the latest attack on its website. “Some of the wounded are in critical condition”.
Details on the victims were not immediately available, but Hedayatullah Stanikzai, an official with the Ministry of Public Health, said a guard employed by the university was among the dead.
Obaidi said that another 44 people, including 35 students, were wounded while about 700 to 750 students were evacuated from the university.
He remembered that moment when he and his colleagues understood they could not escape and tried to put up a defence by pushing chairs and desks against the door of the classroom where they were, ABC News said.
He and about nine students later managed to escape from the campus through an emergency gate. “I was reluctant to jump but a fellow student pushed me and I fell down. The rest I don’t remember”.
At dawn, after the assault had ended, a few women students, some of them terrified and weeping, were escorted out of the campus by policemen.
The attack underscored how despite efforts by the Afghan authorities to improve security, militants in this country are still able to stage large-scale attacks, including in the country’s capital, Kabul.
Mark English, president of the university, said that the institution remained “undeterred in our vital mission of providing a quality higher education experience for all our Afghan students”.
A third attacker was killed when he detonated an explosives-laden auto Wednesday evening in front of the university wall, Mujahid said.
Police had described the attack, which began at about 19:00 local time (14:30 GMT), as “complex”.
The interior ministry official said many people were trapped inside: “They are inside the compound and there are foreign professors along with hundreds of students”.
Two of its professors were kidnapped at gunpoint in Kabul on August 7.
Roman Dehsabzwal, who was inside a second-floor classroom when the assault began, told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan that he believed an attacker blew himself up just outside a building and then others began entering.
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Afghan forces backed by US troops have engaged in heavy fighting in Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand Province, seeking to head off a potential Taliban takeover.
