The Taliban have claimed responsibility for a pair of brazen and co-ordinated attacks on hotels in central Kabul that are frequented by foreigners.
The dawn attacks, which police say killed 19 people and injured 38 others, targeted two guest houses yesterday next to a prominent shopping mall in the city's core.
It was the second major attack in as many months in Afghanistan's capital, a city increasingly less insulated from the insurgent violence in Afghanistan's more volatile south.
While the Taliban said the attacks were aimed at "foreigners," Kabul province's head of countercrime, Said Abdul Ghafar, told The Globe and Mail that Indian doctors and "common workers" were targeted.
India said six of its citizens were killed. An Italian diplomat, a French filmmaker and eight Afghans - including three Afghan National Police officers - were also among the 19 dead, police and government officials said.
"This attack will have bad effects on Kabul security," Mr. Ghafar admitted, adding grimly that police in Kabul are growing "familiar with that kind of attack."
The attacks are something of a show of strength for the Taliban after a slew of arrests of the insurgency's top commanders in Pakistan.
India, one of the largest financial boosters of Afghanistan's redevelopment and a regional rival to Pakistan, which is a safe haven for Taliban fighters, said it "strongly condemns" the "barbaric" attacks, the third on Indians in Kabul in the past 20 months.
"These are the handiwork of those who are desperate to undermine the friendship between India and Afghanistan, and do not wish to see a strong, democratic and pluralistic Afghanistan," India's Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
The attacks began around 6:30 a.m. local time. Using two armed suicide bombers and a car bomb, the insurgents targeted the Arya and Park Residence hotels.
First, the car bomb blew up against the Arya, a residential hotel used by Indian doctors, creating a large crater and collapsing the hotel roof. Mr. Ghafar said the hotel was "completely destroyed."
Subodh Sanjivpaul, an Indian doctor, hid in his bathroom for three hours during the attack.
"When I was coming out, I found two or three dead bodies. When firing was going on, the first car bomb exploded and the full roof came on my head," said Dr. Sanjivpaul, speaking at a military hospital where his wounded foot was bandaged.
After the Arya bombing, the two suicide bombers then walked into the nearby Park Residence guesthouse and started firing their guns at guests and hotel staff.
Fighting between police and the insurgents dragged on at the Park Residence, with estimates ranging from 90 minutes to four hours. Confusion reigned, with police at either end of the street firing at each other in the confusion, witnesses told The Times of London.
While government officials said there were three attackers - one driver and two in suicide vests - the Taliban claimed there were five.
One attacker blew himself up, killing three ANP officers, while the second was shot by police.
Many of the victims were killed when the roof of the Arya collapsed, witnesses said.
"Most of the guests living in these two hotels were foreigners," said Mohammad Wali, a 35-year-old restaurant worker. "Most of the people were under rubble of the roof. … I saw many people like guards, workers and foreigners under rubble. Some of them were killed and injured."
The car bomb knocked the windows out of many surrounding buildings, including the high-profile Safi Landmark hotel and mall.
The French Foreign Ministry said filmmaker Severin Blanchet, who had been mentoring Afghan filmmakers since 2006, was killed. The Italian diplomat who died was shot after at least one insurgent caught him feeding information to police on a cellular phone.
Many of the 38 injured were thought to be civilians. A higher toll may well have been avoided by the timing of the attack - so early in the morning on a religious holiday marking the birthday of the prophet Muhammed. The Taliban did not say if its attackers sought specifically to minimize civilian deaths.
Typically a calm and relatively progressive city, Kabul has been shaken by a series of high-profile attacks in recent months. In October, a United Nations guesthouse was targeted by suicide bombers who killed eight people, including five UN workers. Two months later, a car bomber struck another hotel, killing eight. On Jan. 18, gunmen and suicide bombers targeted a traffic circle near the Ministry of Justice, Central Bank and Presidential Palace, leaving 12 dead.
India's embassy in Kabul was targeted in a pair of attacks in 2008 and 2009, which killed a total of 77 people. Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned yesterday's attack, pledging it would not harm Afghan-Indian relations.
Arun Sahgal, an expert at New Delhi's Institute of Defence Studies, told the Guardian newspaper that the aim of the attacks was "to force down the Indian presence [in Afghanistan]and cut down its influence."
With a report from Associated Press and The Globe and Mail
staff in Kabul