KABUL: The death toll from a complex assault by gunmen on government buildings, in a residential area of Kabul, has risen to 43, officials said on Tuesday.
More than 25 other people were wounded in the attack which began late on Monday afternoon and lasted until just before dawn on Tuesday. More than 350 civilian employees were trapped inside the buildings for a long duration of the assault.
Government forces had to act in a cautious manner and move slowly as a majority of those trapped were in offices located in densely-populated areas, Najb Danesh, an Interior Ministry spokesman told reporters.
Meanwhile, Waheed Majroh, a public health ministry spokesman, said that ambulances were able to resume operations on Tuesday to evacuate those impacted in the attack, even as authorities feared that the death toll would rise. “We have 43 evacuated so far and think the number is likely to rise,” Majroh told Arab News.
A majority of the victims were government officials who were trapped in the attack, he said, adding that at least one woman was also among those killed.
Government forces had also suffered casualties, officials said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack which began just before state employees were heading home after a day of work.
The Taliban, the main insurgent group, said it was not behind the strike.
However, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s Chief Executive accused the Taliban of being responsible for the attack. “The Taliban crime syndicate must know that with every attack they carry out against our people our resolve is further strengthened to eliminate them. Their conduct is a disgrace to the very notion of peace,” he said in a tweet.
It began with a car bomb on a street near the state’s civilian buildings in a busy part of the city which is located some two miles away from the presidential palace. A group of assailants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and explosives entered the buildings soon after, officials said, adding that government troops were scouring the buildings to ensure no attacker was left hidden.
Roads leading to the site of the attack remained closed even after sunrise on Tuesday and a couple of hours after the attack had ended, residents said.
“We could not sleep at all last night. There were explosions and burst of bullets. Glasses of some of the windows in our neighborhood have broken,” Waheed Rafi, a resident living nearby, told Arab News.
The previous attack in Kabul – claimed by Taliban insurgents — took place in late November when a foreign security firm was impacted in a raid. Both Taliban insurgents and affiliates of Daesh have used same tactics of conducting commando-style raids against government targets in recent years.
Taliban delegates and US diplomats held a series of meetings in Abu Dhabi, UAE last week to explore ways to end the Afghan war which began with the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
The Taliban insisted that the withdrawal of foreign troops was the group’s main condition and the first step toward ending the war. The assault came just days after the US media quoted President Donald Trump as saying that he was considering withdrawing 14,000 US troops from Afghanistan.
The sudden move took the Afghan government by surprise with some analysts saying that it could undermine peace talks with the insurgents by emboldening them further with the pullout plan.
“Although, Trump has proven to be a very volatile or unpredictable person, his plan will affect the morale of our troops and may aid the Taliban because it is coming at a crucial time with elections scheduled for April and the security situation being bad in recent months,” Atiqullah Amarkhail, a retired general, told Arab News.
Death toll from brazen Kabul attack jumps to 43
Death toll from brazen Kabul attack jumps to 43
- Assault follows US president’s plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan
- Both the Taliban and Daesh fighters have recently resorted to commando-style raids on government installations
A month on, flood-struck Aceh still reels from worst disaster since 2004 tsunami
- Aceh accounts for almost half of death toll in Sumatra floods that struck in November
- Over 450,000 remain displaced as of Friday, as governor extended state of emergency
JAKARTA: Four weeks since floodwaters and torrents of mud swept across Aceh province, villages are still overwhelmed with debris while communities remain inundated, forced to rely on each other to speed up recovery efforts.
The deadly floods and landslides, triggered by extreme weather linked to Cyclone Senyar, hit the provinces of North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh in late November.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia, was the worst-hit. Accounting for almost half of the 1,137 death toll, a month later more than 450,000 people are still unable to return to their homes, as many struggle to access clean water, food, electricity and medical supplies.
“We saw how people resorted to using polluted river water for their needs,” Ira Hadiati, Aceh coordinator for the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or MER-C, told Arab News on Friday.
Many evacuation shelters were also lacking toilets and washing facilities, while household waste was “piling up on people’s lawns,” she added.
In many regions, people’s basic needs “were still unmet,” said Annisa Zulkarnain, a volunteer with Aceh-based youth empowerment organization Svara.
“Residents end up helping each other and that’s still nowhere near enough, and even with volunteers there are still some limitations,” she told Arab News.
Volunteers and aid workers in Aceh have grown frustrated with the central government’s response, which many have criticized as slow and ineffective.
And Jakarta continues to ignore persistent calls to declare the Sumatra floods a national disaster, which would unlock emergency funds and help streamline relief efforts.
“It seems like there’s a gap between the people and the government, where the government is saying that funds and resources have been mobilized … but the fact on the ground shows that even to fix the bridges, it’s been ordinary people working together,” Zulkarnain said.
After spending the past two weeks visiting some of the worst-affected areas, she said that the government “really need to speed up” their recovery efforts.
Aceh Gov. Muzakir Manaf extended the province’s state of emergency for another two weeks starting Friday, while several district governments have declared themselves incapable of managing the disasters.
Entire villages were wiped out by the disastrous floods, which have also damaged more than 115,000 houses across Aceh, along with 141 health facilities, 49 bridges, and over 1,300 schools.
The widespread damage to roads and infrastructure continue to isolate many communities, with residents traveling for hours on foot or with motorbikes in search of basic supplies.
“Even today, some areas are still inundated by thick mud and there are remote locations still cut off because the bridges collapsed. For access, off-road vehicles are still required or we would use small wooden boats to cross rivers,” Al Fadhil, director of Geutanyoe Foundation, told Arab News.
“From our perspective, disaster management this time around is much worse compared to how it was when the 2004 tsunami happened.”
When the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck in 2004, Aceh was the hardest-hit of all, with the disasters killing almost 170,000 people in the province.
But MER-C’s Hadiati said that the impact of the November floods and landslides is “more extensive and far worse than the tsunami,” as 18 Acehnese cities and regencies have been affected — about twice more than in the 2004 disaster.
As Friday marks 21 years since the cataclysmic tsunami, Fadhil said the current disaster management was “disorganized,” and lacked leadership and coordination from the central government, factors that played a crucial role after 2004.
“The provincial and district governments in Aceh, they’ve now done all they could with what they have,” he said.
“But their efforts stand against the fact that there’s no entry of foreign aid, no outside support, and a central government insisting they are capable.”
