Reuters, Afghanistan :
Six people were killed and dozens wounded when two suicide car bombers and Taliban gunmen attacked an office of the Afghan intelligence agency in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Saturday, a provincial government spokesman said.
Seven militants were also killed during several hours of heavy fighting with Afghan security forces at the Jalalabad headquarters of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said Ahmad Zeya Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of eastern Nangarhar province near the border with Pakistan.
Abdulzai said four NDS agents and two civilians were killed when a truck and a smaller car, both loaded with explosives, attacked the compound and a gunfight between Afghan forces and insurgents broke out.
Reuters was not able to reach the NDS immediately for comment.
Apart from the two suicide bombers, Abdulzai said five gunmen, also armed with suicide vests, were shot and killed by security forces before the fighting ended.
Nangarhar’s public health director, Najib Kamawal, said six bodies and 45 wounded were taken to a nearby hospital.
“Most of the victims are civilians,” Kamawal said.
By late morning, about half of the wounded had been discharged, Abdulzai said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, part of a broader pattern of bold offensives by militants across Afghanistan that has emerged in recent weeks during the summer “fighting season.”
A Taliban spokesman claimed their fighters had killed as many as 71 NDS agents, police and special forces soldiers, although the Islamist group is well-known for making exaggerated claims about casualties in attacks against foreign and Afghan government forces.
The violence coincides with a political deadlock in the capital, Kabul, where rival presidential candidates have been unable to resolve months-long disputes over an election meant to mark the first democratic transfer of power in Afghan history.
Most foreign combat troops are due to leave by the end of the year but the deadlock over the presidential election has meant a prolonged delay in signing a security pact with the United States governing how many troops would remain.
While the political impasse drags on, the Taliban-led insurgency has focused on important tactical and symbolic targets as a challenge to the Afghan security forces.
Afghan forces have been struggling to fight off large numbers of insurgent fighters in provinces to the east, north and south of Kabul in recent weeks.
“This is part of an alarming trend across the country,” said Graeme Smith, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group in Kabul. “They are longer in duration, bigger in size and against more ambitious targets than we’ve seen previously.”
In northern Kunduz province, security forces were in a standoff with insurgents in a weeks-long battle for control over the province that was the last Taliban stronghold before they were driven out by the US-backed Northern Alliance in 2001.
“The insurgents are better armed than us,” said Kunduz police chief Mustafa Mohseni.
“They use heavy machine guns, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and 82mm rockets against our forces,” he said.
