7 killed in raid on hideout

A woman and a child were killed in the attack.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Hundreds of intelligence agents on Wednesday raided the hideout of militants with suspected links to an attack on President Hamid Karzai, as the Afghan capital was sucked deeper into the war against the Taliban.

Terrified residents hid from booming guns and grenades that destroyed the mud-brick house. The battle claimed seven lives — a woman and a child who were in the house, three intelligence agents and two militants.

One of the dead militants had supplied weapons used in Sunday’s attack on Karzai, intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh told reporters.

Afghan security services are under pressure to crack militant cells after the assassination attempt, which came during a military parade in Kabul that was also attended by foreign ambassadors. The attack highlighted the president’s weak grip on the country.

The U.S.-backed leader escaped injury, but a lawmaker and two other people were killed.

Saleh said Wednesday’s raid on a densely populated hillside in western Kabul was part of a wider operation in which six other militant suspects were detained elsewhere.

He said the border regions of neighboring Pakistan were the source of the militant threat.

Saleh alleged that militants involved in the gun and mortar assault on Karzai were exchanging cell phone text messages with people in Pakistan’s Bajur and North Waziristan regions and the main northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attempt on Karzai’s life.

It was at least the fourth attempt to assassinate him since he came to power six years ago. That attack exposed how despite the presence of more than 40,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops and rapidly expanding Afghan security forces, Karzai is struggling to contain the insurgency.

At least 1,000 people have died in fighting in 2008. The U.N. says more than 8,000 people, most of them militants, died in insurgency-related violence in 2007.