“Seven students, one university guard and a guard from the neighbouring vocational school for the visually impaired were martyred”, interior ministry spokesperson Sediq Sediqqi said, adding that three policemen were also killed. It began when one assailant detonated a vehicle bomb outside of the university, which was founded in 2006, during evening classes.
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The dead included seven students, two police officers and a security guard, according to the spokesman.
Dehsabzwal said he escaped by jumping from the second floor along with two others, then fleeing the scene.
Among them was Associated Press photojournalist Massoud Hossaini, who was said to be wounded and later managed to escape with some fellow students. The shots broke the windows, and Hossani fell and cut his hands on the glass. Later, the photographer was able to escape the attack along with nine other students through an emergency gate.
Dozens of students and foreign staff were trapped on the campus while militants attacked with bombs and automatic rifles at about 7:30 p.m. local time.
Two professors at the university – one American and one Australian – were abducted at gunpoint outside the campus earlier this month, underscoring the deteriorating security situation in the capital and across the rest of the country.
The U.S. State Department condemned what it called “an attack on the future of Afghanistan”.
“We are stuck inside our classroom and there are bursts of gunfire”, he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes as fundamentalist Taliban militants step up their summer fighting season against the central government. Their whereabouts still remain unknown.
A United States defense official said a team of USA military advisors are helping Afghan forces to respond to the attack, but not in a combat role. Currently, The university has more than 1,000 students enrolled.
The attack, apparently the first major militant assault on a prominent university in Afghanistan, has cast a pall on the education sector, seen as a rare symbol of hope for the country’s burgeoning youth at a time of rising insecurity.
Thirty-four-year-old Hossaini had won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for capturing the image of a terrified 12-year-old Tarana Akbari in an aftermath of a suicide bomb attack in Kabul. “Two attackers were gunned down”, he said.
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Wednesday’s attack came the day after a US service member was killed by a roadside bomb during a patrol in the hotly-contested southern province of Helmand.
