UN compound attacked

Associated Press

KABUL

A suicide car bomber and three armed militants wearing explosives vests and dressed as women attacked a United Nations compound Saturday in western Afghanistan, but Afghan security forces killed the attackers, and no U.N. employees were harmed, officials said.

The brazen attack began when four militants drove up to the U.N. compound in a car laden with explosives and fired a rocket toward the entrance, said Dilawar Shah Dilawar, deputy police chief of Herat province.

The militants tried unsuccessfully to blow up the gate with the rocket so they could drive the car inside the compound, he said. When that didn’t work, three of the militants got out of the car, and the fourth blew up the vehicle, killing himself. The explosion destroyed the gate, allowing the three to get inside.

“The three attackers were wearing police uniforms covered with burqas,” Dilawar said, referring to the long, flowing garment that many Afghan women wear in public. “All of them had suicide vests and AK-47s.”

Militants sometimes wear burqas or police uniforms as a disguise. The Interior Ministry denied the attackers were wearing police uniforms.

Guards at the U.N. compound and Afghan policemen who responded to the site engaged in sporadic gunfights with the three attackers, who were killed by Afghan security forces. NATO forces also responded, a statement by the U.N. said. Two Afghan guards were wounded.

The attack was similar to one in July in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan where Taliban suicide attackers used a car to blow a hole in the wall of a compound of a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Five men wearing suicide bomb vests then poured into the compound and fought a five-hour gunbattle with Afghan security forces before being killed. A Briton, a German and two Afghans were killed in the attack.