Taliban attack peace talks in Afghanistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai (L) delivers a speech to the National Consultive Peace Jirga in Kabul yesterday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on this landmark gathering, where hundreds of delegates are meeting to discuss peace talks. Photo: AFP

A Taliban suicide squad armed with rockets yesterday targeted a landmark Afghan peace conference hosted by President Hamid Karzai in a bid to seek a consensus on how to end nearly nine years of war.
At least five explosions, believed to be caused by rockets, and gunfire erupted near the giant air-conditioned tent where 1,600 delegates from across the country and Western diplomats attended the opening of the "peace jirga".
One of the jirga organisers said suicide bombers dressed in women's burqas targeted the event, which was being protected by 12,000 security personnel, but that the attack was unsuccessful.
"Three suicide bombers wearing burqas entered a house which was under construction. They fired one RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) towards the tent," Ghulam Farooq Wardak told delegates.
"Thank God, two of them were killed, paying for their crimes. The third has been captured," he said.
The Taliban claimed it had dispatched four suicide bombers armed with guns and rockets who were threatening the jirga from a nearby rooftop.
Two blasts were heard as Karzai delivered his opening address in which he condemned the Taliban for bringing suffering and oppression, while a third took place later about 200 metres (yards) away from the venue, AFP reporters said.
Karzai left the jirga on schedule after his address, driven away in his customary armoured convoy.
Intensifying gunfire rattled the vicinity of the tent in the southeastern Kabul suburbs, where the interior ministry said that Afghan police had surrounded a "terror" cell holed up in a house nearby.
"There is terrorist activity going on in a house in Afshar. The house has been surrounded by police," said interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary.
Sayed Kabiri, chief doctor at a Kabul hospital, said two people had been admitted with injuries caused by the rocket attacks.