He said 20 other people were injured in the predawn attack on the compound of aid contractor Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) by a militant gang which included at least two who blew themselves up. The attack in the northern city of Kunduz was “the work of the foreign mercenaries who do not want the people of Afghanistan to achieve a better life,” Karzai said. Six “terrorists” were involved, Karzai said, adding that the attack “aims to prevent the reconstruction and economic development of Afghanistan.”
Kunduz provincial police chief Mohammad Rezaq Yaqobi said: “One Afghan guard and one Afghan policeman were also killed.”
NATO said seven other foreigners were injured. A US Embassy official said one of the dead foreigners was a German security guard and another possibly from the Philippines.
The British Embassy in Kabul said it was investigating reports that the third foreign casualty was a British national. Police said the fighting, which lasted about seven hours, ended around 11:00 a.m. after the final two militants inside the building were killed.
“We managed to kill the remaining opposition and police got into the building,” said Yaqobi. Smoke billowed from the building, which was surrounded by NATO and Afghan troops after the ambush.
“The first suicide attacker detonated at the entrance, the second detonated inside the premises, killing one foreign national,” Kunduz provincial governor Mohammad Omar said. German and US troops are based in Kunduz under NATO’s operations to quell a Taleban insurgency which has been intensifying during the nearly nine-year conflict.
The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, which came as US Gen. David Petraeus was due to arrive in Afghanistan late Friday to take command of the faltering campaign. “This morning six Taleban suicide bombers attacked the United States development organization branch,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the militant movement, told AFP.
Friday’s attack came just days after Taleban gunmen attacked a major NATO base in the eastern city of Jalalabad, setting off a car bomb and firing rockets.
US aid contractors have been attacked across Afghanistan in recent months, hampering their efforts to recruit foreign staff as part of the “civilian surge” to speed development.
The US and NATO have 140,000 troops in Afghanistan, with most of the newly-deployed heading to the south as part of a US-led counter-insurgency strategy aimed at bringing the fight to the Taleban.
NATO said Friday that two of its soldiers had been killed in insurgent attacks, one in eastern Afghanistan, the other in the south, bringing the death toll so far this year to 325.
