Gunfight Continues Near India Consulate in Afghanistan

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
January 4, 2016

ISLAMABAD—Afghan officials say that several heavily-armed assailants were still holed up in a building just meters from India’s consulate in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and a gunfight fight was underway with national security forces.

The siege in the Balkh province began Sunday night when a group of gunmen attempted to storm the consulate by firing rockets at the facility before retreating into the nearby building.

Provincial Governor Atta Mohammad Noor, who is personally commanding the clearing operation, told VOA Monday that “at least three attackers” are shooting at Afghan security forces from inside the building.

So far, no-one has claimed responsibility for the consulate attack.

The Taliban is mostly blamed for attacks against local and foreign targets in the country.

However, when contacted by VOA, a spokesman for the Islamist insurgency, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that “as of now, our fighters and sources in the city have no knowledge” about the gunmen involved in it and efforts are underway to ascertain the details.

Afghan police have confirmed that five security personnel and three civilians are among at least eight people wounded in the firefight.

Residents in the area told reporters shortly after the standoff began they heard two loud explosions followed by bursts of automatic gunfire. “We are under fire,” Barjabashi Sardar, India’s Consul General in Mazar-e-Sharif, told the Indian media, adding “everybody is safe” because nobody could enter the consulate.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber struck a security police check post near Kabul’s international airport on Monday but officials reported no casualties.

The bomber apparently wanted to target a convoy of foreign forces. One of the vehicles in the convoy was slightly damaged, a senior police officer told reporters.

The attack on the Indian consulate is the latest in a series of assaults on India’s diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan.

Suicide bombers attacked India’s consulates in the Afghan city of Herat in 2014 and in the eastern city of Jalalabad bordering Pakistan in 2013.