16 die in 10-hour raid as militants storm Kabul American University
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SIXTEEN people were killed after militants stormed the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, officials said yesterday, in a nearly 10-hour raid that prompted anguished pleas for help from trapped students.
Explosions and gunfire rocked the campus after the attack began on Wednesday evening, just weeks after two university professors — an American and an Australian — were kidnapped near the school.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the assault, but it occurred as the Taliban ramp up their summer offensive against the Western-backed government.
The presidential office said the attack was “orchestrated” from Pakistan, Afghanistan’s longtime regional nemesis often accused of harboring the Taliban. “Sixteen people, including eight students, were killed and 53 others were wounded,” health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh said.
It was not clear how many attackers mounted the assault but Kabul police said at least two of them were gunned down in the clearing operation.
Hundreds of trapped students were rescued during the overnight operation, many of whom tweeted desperate messages for help, with some using classroom furniture to barricade the doors.
The attack began just after dusk, when the private university is usually packed with students, many of them working professionals doing part-time courses.
“I heard explosions and gunfire is going on close by... our classroom is filled with smoke and dust,” an anxious student said by telephone, before fleeing the campus.
Authorities refused to confirm whether any hostages had been taken.
NATO military advisers helped Afghan forces to respond to the attack, a United States official said, without specifying how many troops were involved.
The attack, apparently the first major militant assault on a prominent school in Afghanistan, has cast a pall on the education sector, widely seen as a rare symbol of hope for the country’s burgeoning youth.
The growing number of students attending university, especially women, is hailed as a success story in Afghanistan since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban regime, which banned women’s education.
“Terrorist groups, by attacking civilians, educational institutions, residential areas, culverts, bridges, electricity stations... want to obstruct growth and strengthening of the values that Afghans believe in,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement.
The elite American University of Afghanistan, which opened in 2006 and enrols more than 1,700 students, was long seen as a high-profile target for militants partly because it attracts foreign faculty members.
The two foreign professors at the university were seized from their vehicle on August 7. Their whereabouts are still unknown and no group so far has publicly claimed responsibility for the abductions.
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