KABUL — A team of militants launched a spectacular assault at the heart of the Afghan government Monday, with two men detonating suicide bombs and the rest fighting to the death only 50 yards from the gates of the presidential palace.
The attack paralyzed the city for hours, as hundreds of Afghan commandos converged and opened fire.
The battle unfolded in Pashtunistan Square, a traffic circle where the palace of President Hamid Karzai, the Ministry of Justice and the Central Bank, the target of the attack, are located.
As the gunbattle raged, another suicide bomber, this one driving an ambulance, struck a traffic circle a half-mile away, sending a second mass of bystanders fleeing. Afghan officials said three soldiers and two civilians — including a child — were killed, and at least 71 were wounded.
The assault was the latest audacious operation by insurgents meant to shatter the calm of the Afghan capital.
The Taliban are a mostly rural phenomenon in a mostly rural country; the overwhelming majority of U.S. troops are deployed in small outposts in the countryside.
On most days, the war does not reach the urban centers.
But increasingly the Taliban are bringing the fight into the cities, further demoralizing Afghans and lending to the impression that virtually no part of the country is safe.
The effect of Monday's attack seemed primarily psychological, designed to strike fear into the usually quiet precincts of downtown Kabul — and to drive home the ease with which insurgents could strike the U.S.-backed government here.
In that way, the assault succeeded without question. Five hours after the attack began, gunfire was still echoing through the downtown as commandos searched for holdouts in a nearby office building.
The Faroshga market, one of the city's most popular shopping malls and where some militants holed up, lay in ruins, belching black smoke.
The seven militants who carried out the attack died; five were gunned down and two killed themselves.
The streets of Kabul emptied. Merchants closed their shops, and Afghans ran from their offices.
Even guards assigned to Karzai came to join the fighting; it was that close.
"All of a sudden three men came in wrapped in shawls — and then they pulled them off and we could see their guns and grenades," said an Afghan man who witnessed the attack and who had been in the market.
"They told us to get out, and then they went to the roof and started firing."
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Reached by telephone, a spokesman said the group had sent 20 suicide bombers for the operation. That was an exaggeration.
The attack began at 9:30 a.m., when the streets of downtown Kabul were jammed with traffic.
A man wearing a suicide belt approached the gates of the Central Bank, which regulates the flow of currency in the country, and tried to push past the guards.
The guards shot him, but not before the bomber managed to detonate his explosives in the street.
The other militants, who were apparently intending to follow the suicide bomber into the bank, took cover in the Faroshga market, a five-story building next door.
They expelled the shoppers and shopkeepers, ran to the higher floors and began shooting.
Other fighters slipped into the Ministry of Justice and the Ariana theater, the police said, but a survey of both sites revealed no evidence of that.
Within minutes, hundreds of Afghan commandos, soldiers and police officers surrounded Pashtunistan Square and attacked. Some of the Afghan fighters were part of specially formed anti-terrorism squads.
Monday's battle was notable for the absence of U.S. soldiers. A small group of commandos from New Zealand were the only Western soldiers on the scene.
Bullets flew in every direction, thousands of them. The militants, holed up on the upper floors of the market, fired and fought as their building exploded and burned.
A blast sounded, and then another — the sounds of heavy guns firing inside.
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