Suicide bombers, gunmen storm governor’s compound in Afghanistan
A squad of suicide bombers and gunmen stormed a provincial governor’s compound in southwestern Afghanistan on Wednesday, but security forces managed to fight them off, Afghan officials said.
At least five of the assailants were killed, authorities said. Two police officers and a provincial council member also died in the hours-long assault, according to Gen. Jabar Purdili, the police chief of Nimroz province. About a dozen other people were reported to have been wounded.
Nimroz shares a border with Helmand, where some of the heaviest fighting of the nearly 9-year-old Afghan conflict has taken place in recent months.
Complex, coordinated attacks on government installations have become more common as an emboldened insurgency braces for confrontation with NATO forces elsewhere in the south this summer.
Western officials have said they intend to drive the Taliban from Kandahar, the south’s largest city and the insurgency’s spiritual home. But the insurgents are digging in, and they have embarked on a campaign of assassinations against government officials and tribal leaders.
One prominent district elder was shot dead in Kandahar on Tuesday; the city’s deputy mayor was gunned down while at prayer in a mosque earlier this month.
Wednesday’s attack also pointed up what the military calls a “squirting” effect: When Taliban fighters are driven from one sanctuary, they seek another. Some of the militant factions operating in Nimroz are thought to have fled an offensive earlier this year by U.S. Marines and other coalition forces in the Helmand town of Marja.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Nimroz attack, and threatened more such assaults.
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