5 militants dead ends Kabul hostage situation

KABUL: (MEP) – Five militants stormed a guest house used by foreigners in Afghanistan’s capital Friday, holding a number of people hostage during a standoff with police and killing a girl before one of them was shot dead and the four others blew themselves up, the country’s deputy interior minister said.

A security guard was wounded in a suicide blast at the beginning of the attack, said Deputy Interior Minister Ayoub Salangi. Everyone who had been held inside the building escaped unharmed, he said.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Sediq Sediqqi, said 20 foreign nationals were moved to a safe place.

He said the target of the attack was Roots of Peace, a U.S.-based aid organization whose offices are in the building. The group works with people of war-torn communities “to provide lasting economic opportunities,” according to its Facebook page.

“Our guesthouse was under attack, but all our workers are safe,” the organization’s country director, Mohammad Sharif Osmani, told CNN.

The Taliban claimed responsibility, with a spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, saying they attacked a location used by foreigners as a church and for converting Afghans to Christianity.

The attack began when someone in a car detonated explosives outside the building, Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Mohammad Ayoub Salangi said.

The three others then stormed the building and held inside the five people — three Americans, a Malaysian and a person from an unspecified African country — as a standoff with police unfolded, he said.

The Uzbek Embassy and offices of other organizations are located nearby, police said.

The attack came three days after militants stormed an election commission office in Kabul. That led to a five-hour gun battle with Afghan security services in which five people were killed — two police officers, two election commission workers and a provincial council candidate, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

The Taliban, who also claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, have vowed to use force to disrupt the planned April 5 presidential election.

Last week, the Taliban also claimed responsibility for an attack on the Afghan capital’s Serena Hotel in which a reporter for the Agence France-Presse news agency, his wife and two of his three children were killed. Five others were also killed. The hotel was hosting celebrations to mark the eve of the Persian New Year.