Afghan forces end siege after suicide attacks in Kabul

Afghan security forces ended an11-hour standoff in central Kabul on Tuesday, shooting dead thelast of a group of attackers who struck hours after a separatesuicide bombing killed and wounded dozens of security personneland civilians.

The bloody episode began on Monday afternoon with a twinsuicide bombing in a busy area of the capital near the DefenceMinistry that killed 35 people, including several seniorsecurity officers, and wounded 103.

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That attack was claimed by the Taliban and was followed afew hours later by a car bomb in Share Naw, a business andresidential area of the city close to the government and embassydistrict.

After the blast in Share Naw, three gunmen barricadedthemselves in close to an office of aid group Care Internationaland a government complex. The target of the attack was notclear.

I thought that the house had collapsed on us. ResidentTogrul Big

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the ShareNaw attack, which caused only six injuries. Care Internationalsaid in a statement its staff in Kabul were safely relocated.

"When the explosion happened, all of our windows broke andfor a minute I thought that the house had collapsed on us," saidTogrul Big who lives near the Care International compound andsuffered a hand injury in the car-bomb blast.

Mid-morning on Tuesday, after hours of standoff interruptedoccasionally by sporadic gunfire, Interior Ministry spokesmanSediq Sediqqi said Afghan special forces had killed all thoseinvolved in the attack.

The violence highlighted the precarious security in thecapital just a month before a conference in Brussels whereinternational donors are expected to pledge continued financialsupport to Afghanistan.

Officers killed

The Taliban's ability to conduct co-ordinated attacks inKabul has piled pressure on the Western-backed government, whichhas struggled to reassure a war-weary population that it canguarantee security.

The attacks came less than two weeks after gunmen attackedthe American University in Kabul, killing 13 people.

Many casualties in the Defence Ministry attack were causedwhen security forces personnel and civilians who rushed to helpvictims of an initial explosion were caught by a second blastminutes later.

An army general and two senior police commanders were amongthe dead, a ministry official said. Another officialsaid the deputy head of President Ashraf Ghani's personalprotection force had also been killed.

Afghanistan's foreign partners, concerned about the abilityof the security forces to withstand Taliban violence, areexpected to pledge support over coming years at the Brusselsconference, three months after NATO members reaffirmed theircommitment at a meeting in Warsaw.

Outside Kabul, the insurgents have stepped up their militarycampaign, threatening towns including Lashkar Gah, capital ofthe strategic southern province of Helmand, as well as Kunduz,the northern city they briefly took last year.