Afghan gunfight: Kabul police battle insurgents

Afghan and international security forces are battling an ongoing multi-pronged attack by insurgents targeting the US embassy, Nato headquarters and police buildings in Kabul.

Police are still exchanging fire with two gunmen holed up in an unfinished high-rise building overlooking the diplomatic quarter.

Six people have been killed and 16 injured, Kabul's police chief said.

The Taliban said they were behind the violence.

Police killed four insurgents, police chief General Ayub told the BBC.

"This attack is the work of the Haqqani network," he said. The Haqqani network is closely allied to the Taliban, but operates independently.

Gen Ayub said the insurgents wanted to carry out attacks in Kabul to coincide with the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Nato said the attack was an attempt to derail the security handover to Afghan-led forces, as international troops begin to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Co-ordinated attack

Tuesday's attacks appear to be a complex operation. At about 13:30 local time (09:00 GMT), insurgents fired rockets on a number of targets in Kabul's upmarket embassy district.
In the west of the city, another two suicide attackers detonated explosives outside a police station.

A third was killed as he tried to make it into the airport. A jail run by the intelligence service was also a target.
Six gunmen took over an unfinished high-rise building near the Abdul Haq roundabout, overlooking the embassy district, and used it to fire on the Nato compound and US embassy.

A Taliban spokesman said the group was carrying out "a massive suicide attack on local and foreign intelligence facilities".

Nato and the US embassy said none of their staff were among the casualties of the attack.

US marines were seen on the roof of the embassy building assessing the situation and checking their defences were robust, correspondents say. Military helicopters are in the area.

Nato's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned the violence, describing it as an attempt to test the handover of Afghanistan's security to Afghan-led forces, an effort that would not succeed.

"We have confidence in the Afghan authorities' ability to deal with this situation," said Mr Rasmussen in Brussels. "Transition is on track and it will continue."

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