KABUL, Afghanistan (MCT) — Taliban-led insurgents opened a spring offensive Sunday with a wave of coordinated suicide missions, firing at embassies and government offices from seized buildings in Kabul and attacking U.S. bases and police stations in three eastern provinces.
The strikes, which seemed to catch U.S.-led forces and Afghan authorities by surprise, sparked fierce firefights in Kabul and two other cities.
“This is the start of the spring operations,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, declared in a telephone interview. “This is just the beginning.”
The attacks lasted past nightfall in Kabul and Puli Alam, the capital of neighboring Logar province. At least 26 insurgents and four civilians were killed, Afghan and NATO officials said. At least 36 others, mostly civilians, were wounded. All of the casualties were Afghans.
Some of the attackers were captured.
The attacks, Mujahid said, were “a message” in response to recent assertions by U.S. officials and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen “that there would be no spring offensive because we are not able to fight.”
The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, issued a statement calling the strikes “largely ineffective.”
In a separate statement, the ISAF commander, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, praised the response of Afghan security forces.
The insurgents’ choice of targets, he added, “speaks volumes about where we are in this campaign” to crush the insurgency and create a “sovereign Afghanistan responsive to its people.”
But while the violence brought them no military gains, the insurgents demonstrated their ability once again to stage complex operations inside the security rings of Kabul and other government centers that will without doubt stoke fears of continued turmoil after U.S. and allied combat forces are gone at the end of 2014.
