Gunbattle in Kabul after attack near Afghan presidential palace (Second Lead)

KABUL - Fighting raged across central Kabul Monday after an unknown number of militants occupied a building near the presidential palace and two blasts rocked the Afghan capital. At least four Taliban bombers were killed and 18 people were wounded, officials said.

A suicide bomber targeted a building near the foreign ministry, killing and wounding several people, private television channel Tolo reported.

An hour later, another bomber detonated himself outside a cinema hall, also in downtown Kabul, causing an unknown number of casualties, witness Abdul Halim said.

Interior ministry spokesman Zamarai Bashary confirmed that militants had taken up positions in the cinema hall.

Two bombers detonated explosives near the presidential palace and two others were killed by Afghan security forces, he said.

A fierce gunbattle was going on in the area as the fighting had expanded from south of the presidential palace across central Kabul, which residents fled.

Bashary said almost all the buildings occupied by the militants had been cleared and security forces were searching for the remaining militants in the area.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said by telephone from an undisclosed location that as many as 20 Taliban fighters and suicide bombers had entered the city to target government buildings, including the presidential palace.

The militants fired at the southern gate of the palace and at the finance and justice ministries from the Foreshgah Buzerg Afghan shopping complex, where they had taken up positions, a police official in the area said.

“Police, army forces and intelligence forces are preparing to raid the building,” he said.

NATO said in a statement that it was assisting Afghan forces to contain the militants, and NATO helicopters were hovering over the neighbourhood where the fighting was taking place.

Farid Rahid, spokesman for the public health ministry, said 18 wounded men, mostly civilians, had so far been taken to city hospitals.

At least one rocket hit the garden of the Serena Hotel, the only five-star hotel in Kabul, one of its foreign guests said.

Mujahid claimed that many foreigners had been killed at the Serena Hotel, adjacent to the shopping centre, but the hotel guest said they had been moved to the basement for their safety.

The attack took place on the same day that President Hamid Karzai was to swear in his new cabinet at the presidential palace.

Authorities had deployed a heavy security presence on Kabul’s streets because the government had feared a Taliban attack on the capital.

Speaker Younus Qanooni told parliament days ago that the Taliban had stolen armoured vehicles to carry out an attack in Kabul. Another legislator said one of those vehicles was used in Monday’s attack.

NATO forces were “working closely with our Afghan partners to aggressively contain the situation during which several small explosions were reported near the Feroshgah e Afghan Shopping Center and the Serena Hotel,” the alliance said in a statement.

“Insurgents also used small-arms fire in these attacks,” it said.

A witness at the Central Bank, adjacent to the palace and in front of the shopping centre, said he saw two security officials shot and wounded.