The Taliban launched a brazen assault in the Afghan capital today, with two suicide bombers detonating their explosives outside an election office on the edge of Kabul while other gunmen stormed into the building, trapping dozens of employees inside.
A candidate for a seat on a provincial council was killed, along with an election worker and two policemen, said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.
All five insurgents involved in the attack, which triggered a standoff that lasted more than four hours, were also killed, he said.
The assault was the latest in the insurgents' violent campaign against the country's April 5 elections, when Afghans are to choose their next president and local council members. The Taliban have vowed to disrupt he polls.
Fierce gunfire reverberated across the neighborhood of Karte Char throughout the afternoon as heavily armed troops from the Afghan rapid response force surrounded the election office building, located near the home of presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.
Ahmadzai was not at home at the time and was not the target of the attack, officials said, but the local office of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission.
Police official Sayed Gul Aga Hashmi said the assault started with one suicide bomber detonating his car and the other setting off his explosives' vest. The blasts paved way for other attackers to storm inside the building, Hashimi said.
As the battle unfolded, an election commission official told The Associated Press there were about 20 election workers trapped in the building. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to media.
He said he had spoken to a colleague who was hiding inside the bathroom with seven others and who had told him there were about more employees elsewhere in the building.
Sediqqi later revised the figure to 70 people trapped, after he got more updated information. He said police eventually rescued all but two, the slain candidate for the post of provincial council member and election worker.
The Taliban claimed responsibility in a statement to media, saying their target was the election office.
The building in Karte Char is in the southwestern Kabul, near the historic war-damaged Darulaman Palace built by Afghan King Amanullah. The landmark palace was heavily damaged during the Afghan civil war and stands empty.
Also today, insurgents carried out attacks on a bank in northeastern Kunar province and on an Afghan outpost in the eastern Khost province, on the border with Pakistan.
