Tet of 2013 Continues [View all]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/10/193508/in-quiet-kabul-neighborhood-taliban.html



Sayed Maqbol gestures at the the unfinished house next door to his in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was used by Taliban fighters to attack a NATO base at the adjacent Kabul International Airport. The Afghan police rescued his family in the resulting fierce firefight.

In quiet Kabul neighborhood, Taliban attack began with mugging at mosque
By Jay Price and Rezwan Natiq | McClatchy Foreign Staff
Posted on Monday, June 10, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide attack that paralyzed a key NATO headquarters at Kabul’s international airport early Monday began, as it turns out, with a mugging outside a mosque.

The seven Taliban fighters drove into a residential neighborhood adjacent to the northern, military side of the airport, in a car and a delivery truck, about 4 a.m. Monday. They got out and tried to enter a house but the gate was locked, said a man named Berhannudin, who was walking with a friend to a nearby mosque for morning prayers.

~snip~

At first, Berhannudin – who like many Afghans uses only one name – thought the men really were police. Then the one in civilian clothes pointed a pistol at another man outside the mosque and demanded his cellphone before the men returned to their vehicles.

What happened next was a five-hour orgy of gunfire and explosions as the men took up positions in a massive four-story home under construction about 350 yards north of the airport’s security perimeter and opened fire on the operational headquarters of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the headquarters of the Afghan air force.