Taliban claim responsibility for Kabul airport attack

A militant attack at Kabul airport on Thursday was carried out by the Taliban, it said in a statement.

File photo of Kabul airport. (AFP/Roberto Schmidt)

KABUL: The Taliban on Thursday said they were responsible for an ongoing assault on #Kabul airport. "A number of our mujahedeen armed with heavy and light weapons have launched an attack on Kabul International Airport," the #insurgents' spokesman Zabiuhallah Mujahid said in a statement.

Witnesses reported explosions and gunfire ringing out near the airport, and the interior ministry said a group of insurgents had opened fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades after seizing a building under construction at the airport.

The attack began around 4:30 am (0000 GMT) but no casualties have been reported so far, the ministry said. "The situation will be brought under control before long," General Ayub Salangi, the deputy interior minister, told AFP as security forces armed with automatic rifles took up position.

Civilian flights from the international airport north of Kabul have been suspended, another Afghan official said. The airport lies next to a sprawling military base run by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, whose troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan after more than a decade of war, as the country lies in the grip of a power struggle following disputed presidential elections.

ISAF and Afghan military helicopters were seen hovering over the area during Thursday's attack, which came after a devastating suicide bombing at a busy market in southeastern Paktika province on Tuesday killed at least 42 people.

The attack came as Afghanistan geared up for the massive poll audit agreed by the two rival presidential contenders, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, following a deal brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Election officials expect that the results of the audit, which will take at least three weeks, would be accepted by both candidates after weeks of bitter dispute over fraud claims. The impasse over the vote to succeed President Hamid Karzai has raised fears of a return to the ethnic violence of the 1990s.

Abdullah -- who says he already suffered one stolen election at Karzai's hands in 2009 -- is half-Tajik while Ghani is from the majority Pashtun community, as are the Taliban. Every one of the 8.1 million votes cast in the run-off election will be checked for signs of fraud in a painstaking process in Kabul.

The Kabul airport is a prime target for the insurgents. Militants destroyed Karzai's parked helicopter and damaged three other choppers after firing rockets into the airport on July 3. Channel News