KABUL (Web Desk) – At least one gunman attacked a guest house popular with foreigners in Kabul on Wednesday evening killing at least 11 people, including an American and two Indians, in a bold assault that showed Afghanistan still faces security challenges, international media reported.
Authorities cordoned off the area around the Park Palace guest house in Kabul’s Kolola Pushta, a diplomatic enclave in the Afghan capital that includes a number of guest houses used by foreigners, immediately after the attack began at about 8:30 pm local time (1600 GMT).
A standoff with police ended about five hours on Wednesday evening later as ambulances raced out of the area. The police say they shot dead the two gunmen before they could carry out a suicide attack.
Security forces rescued more than 50 people who had been at a party in the garden of the hotel.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, although similar brazen assaults in the past have been carried out by the Taliban and the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network.
India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Amar Sinha, has tweeted that there have been “a few Indian casualties among others”.
An unnamed Indian foreign ministry official told the AFP news agency that “two Indians are dead, one is unaccounted for and three others are safe”.
The gunmen reportedly went room to room seeking foreigners.
US embassy spokeswoman Monica Cummings told the AFP news agency that one US citizen had died in the attack.
“Our thoughts are with the families of the victims at this time. Out of respect for the families of those killed, we have no further information at this time,” Ms Cummings said.
Earlier on Wednesday, gunmen opened fire at a meeting of Muslim clerics in the southern province of Helmand, killing at least seven people, police said.
The Ulemma Council, the highest religious authority in a deeply conservative country, had repeatedly announced its support for security forces fighting the hardline Islamist Taliban insurgents.
The Taliban have stepped up attacks since most foreign forces pulled out at the end of last year.
Ousted from power in 2001, the Taliban have been fighting to bring down the U.S.-backed government in Kabul.
In the past Pakistan has been blamed by the Afghan government for violent acts of this sort. But this attack comes at a time of good relations between the two countries, amid signs that a peace deal with the Taliban may be possible.
President Ghani is coming under pressure to deliver on that promise.
