After the attacker detonated his cache of explosives, two other militants stormed inside the guest house in Kunduz city and engaged police in a two-hour gunbattle, said Mubobullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the governor of Kunduz province.
“When the bomber blew himself up, the explosion shook everything,” Sayedi said. “It broke glass everywhere.”
Three guards working at the guest house were killed and 10 other people, including an Afghan policeman, were wounded, he said. Foreigners staying at the two-story guest house escaped through the rear of the building, he said. The inn burned and several nearby buildings were damaged.
“We heard a very big explosion that shook all of Kunduz,” said Ahmadullah, a 30-year-old shopkeeper in Kunduz, who lives about 10 yards (meters) from the guest house. “It was a very strong explosion.”
Ahmadullah, who uses just one name, said he and his family quickly ran out of the neighborhood to a relative’s house nearby. Worried that they were still too close to the fighting, they moved even farther away to seek protection in another relative’s house.
“All my children were so scared,” he said. “We have never been so close to a suicide bombing.”
Fighting has been focused in southern and eastern Afghanistan, but insurgents have been conducting a rising number of attacks in the once-peaceful north.
Late last month, a vehicle carrying the deputy governor of Kunduz province struck a roadside bomb, injuring three of his bodyguards. In June, a bombing at a bazaar in the province killed at least 10 people. Also in June, three policemen were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself outside a mosque and another bomber hit a German NATO convoy, killing three civilians.
In May, a suicide bomber infiltrated a high-level meeting in neighboring Takhar province and killed northern Afghanistan’s top police commander, Gen. Mohammed Daoud, provincial police chief Shah Jehan Noori and two German soldiers. The German NATO commander in northern Afghanistan was wounded.
Late last year, a suicide bomber killed Kunduz Governor Mohammed Omar and 15 other people at a mosque in neighboring Takhar province.
