Smoke rises from a hotel building after an explosion and gunfire in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, December 12, 2022. AP
According to Kabul Police, a loud explosion followed by gunfire was heard in downtown Kabul on Monday afternoon as attackers attacked a guest house used mostly by Chinese nationals. An Italian-run emergency hospital less than a mile away in the Afghan capital said it received 21 patients from the attack, three of whom were dead on arrival.
A photo Kabul police shared with CBS News showed Chinese signage on the wall of the multi-story building. A Kabul resident told CBS News by phone that Chinese nationals had visited the hotel.
“Around 2:30 a.m., a hotel in the Shar-e-naw area of Kabul city called Kabul Hotel was attacked,” Kabul Police spokesman Khalid Zadran told CBS News, adding that the hotel “by some foreigners and local Afghans.”
Smoke pours out of a window of a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, used by many Chinese nationals, during an attack on December 12, 2022. Kabul police
Videos posted on social media showed fire and thick smoke billowing from a ground-floor window of the hotel building. Another video, captured from a building opposite the hotel, showed men fleeing from another window – one of them clinging desperately to an air conditioner before falling several floors.
The chief spokesman for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the attack ended after three attackers were killed in a gun battle. He said only two foreigners were slightly injured after fleeing windows.
The Afghan branch of the terrorist group ISIS, known as ISIS-K or ISIS Khorasan, later claimed responsibility for the attack. The group has stepped up attacks since the Taliban regained control of the country and the US-led military coalition withdrew in the summer of 2021.
Monday’s complex attack, which appeared to target Chinese nationals, appeared to be the latest in a string of violent attacks directed against the few countries the Taliban can count among their allies.
On Sunday, China’s Ambassador Wang Yu in Kabul met with the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Taliban regime, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, and called on the group to “pay more attention to the security of the Chinese embassy in Kabul,” the Chinese embassy said in a statement Taliban regime Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Last week, gunmen attacked the Pakistani ambassador at his embassy premises in Kabul, injuring a Pakistani security guard. The ambassador himself narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. The attack was claimed by ISIS-K and the Taliban reportedly arrested suspects.
In September, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Russian embassy in the heart of Kabul, killing two Russian diplomats in what appears to be the first attack on a foreign diplomatic mission in Afghanistan since the country fell to the Taliban.
Pakistan, Russia, China and Iran, some of Afghanistan’s neighbors, have all been accused of supporting the Taliban in various places over the past 20 years. The Russians have even been accused of putting a bounty on American troops in Afghanistan.
A member of the Taliban security forces walks near an attack site in Shahr-e-naw, one of the city’s main commercial areas in Kabul, on December 12, 2022. WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty
Political analysts believe the attacks on Taliban supporters show a growing danger to the country, and one they believe will only increase as ISIS and other opposing groups try to show that the Taliban are not in able to secure the country.
“Attacks on countries and individuals that directly and indirectly support the Taliban will increase,” Ahmad Saeedi, a political analyst and former diplomat, told CBS News. “Afghanistan is fighting a regional intelligence war in which everyone is trying to further their own interests.”
Tariq Farhadi, a former adviser to Western-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani who now works as a political analyst, also said the Taliban should expect more such attacks on their allies. He also warned that many of the extremist group’s foot soldiers, who have not benefited much directly from their seizure of power, may be tempted to join opposing, possibly even more extremist, groups.
“It is possible to see a more brutal group than the Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan in the future,” Farhadi said.
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