Militants attack Kabul university killing 12 people

AT LEAST 12 people were killed after militants stormed the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, officials said yesterday, in a nearly 10-hour raid that prompted anguished pleas for help from trapped students.

Explosions and gunfire rocked the campus after the attack beganWednesday evening, just weeks after two university professors – an American and an Australian – were kidnapped at gunpoint near the school.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the assault, but it occurred as Taliban insurgents ramp up their nation- wide summer offensive against the Western-backed Kabul government.

“Seven students, one university guard and a guard from the neighbouring vocational school for the visually impaired were martyred,” interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said, adding three policemen were also killed.

At least 45 others were wounded, some of them critically, he said. It was not clear how many attackers mounted the assault but Kabul police said at least two of them were gunned down in the clearance operation.

Hundreds of trapped students were rescued during the overnight operation, many of whom tweeted desperate messages for help, with some using classroom furniture to barricade the doors.

The attack began just after dusk, when the private university is usually packed with students, many of them working professionals doing part-time courses.

Many of the wounded were rushed into waiting ambulances outside the university on stretchers, as erratic gunshots rang out through the night.

NATO militar y adv isers helped Afghan forces to respond to the attack, a US official said, without specifying how many troops were involved.

After the attack ended a few women students were escorted out of the campus at dawn by policemen.

The attack, apparently the first major militant assault on a prominent university in Afghanistan, has cast a pall on the education sector, widely seen as a rare symbol of hope for the country’s burgeoning youth amid rising insecurity.

The growing number of students attending university, especially women, is hailed as a success story in Afghanistan since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban regime.