Two foreigners, including a Spanish security officer, and four Afghan police were also killed in the attack, in a heavily protected part of Kabul close to several embassies and government buildings, Kabul police spokesman Basir Mujahid said.
Advertisement
Multiple blasts struck Kabul’s affluent Shir Pur district on Friday evening.
Security men near the embassy ducked from gunshots as they hauled away a limp body and two wounded men through the dark to a waiting ambulance – one bleeding from the head, the other a policeman with a gunshot wound to his leg – an AFP photographer saw.
The attack follows a 27-hour Taliban siege this week of Kandahar airport, the largest military installation in southern Afghanistan, in which at least 50 people died, including women and children.
The Taliban say their fighters detonated a auto bomb in the Sherpur area and were now inside a building there.
Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said, “Suicide attacks started on a guesthouse of invaders in the Sherpoor area of Kabul in the evening”. Afghan security forces suppressed a suicide attack on a guest house attached to the Spanish embassy in Kabul, killing three Taliban fighters after hours of intermittent gunfire and explosions that lasted into the early hours of Saturday.
At least seven people were treated in a nearby hospital run by Italian aid group Emergency, mainly for minor injuries.
It is not yet clear if the guest house was inside the embassy premises.
The assault came just hours after President Ashraf Ghani expressed optimism about the resumption of peace talks with the Taliban.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the Taliban taunted authorities with the “disgrace” of not being able to prevent an attack in the heart of the capital.
Spanish news agency Europa Press reported that President Mariano Rajoy had been informed, citing government sources.
The president has staked considerable political capital in advocating bonhomie with Afghanistan’s neighbour.
Advertisement
“The mujahideen are making rapid military gains, capturing territory and destroying enemy centres”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter.
