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Isis claims responsibility for Kabul hospital attack by fake doctors Thirty dead in Kabul hospital attack by Isis militants disguised as doctors
(about 2 hours later)
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a military hospital in Kabul in which gunmen dressed as doctors entered the facility and fought security forces for hours. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Kabul military hospital by gunmen disguised as doctors who breached the facility and battled security forces for hours.
The attack on Wednesday began when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the rear of the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan hospital and three attackers with automatic weapons and hand grenades entered the complex, security officials said. More than 30 people died and dozens more were injured, the Afghan defence ministry said.
The fake doctors had taken position on upper floors and engaged special forces sent to the scene. The attack began with a suicide bombing at the rear of the hospital complex in the Afghan capital. Officials said at least three gunmen dressed as medical staff then entered the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan facility and took up positions on the upper floors.
Abdul Qadir, a worker at the hospital, said he saw one gunman dressed in a white doctor’s coat take out an AK-47 assault rifle and open fire, killing at least one patient and one hospital worker. A second explosion was heard as Afghan special forces engaged the gunmen and “heavy fighting” ensued, a defence ministry spokesman said. An earlier death toll of three was revised upwards after security forces carried out checks in the aftermath of the fighting.
Security forces blocked off the area around the hospital, near a busy traffic intersection, and special forces descended on to the roof of the main building from helicopters. As fighting went on, a second explosion was heard from inside. Isis’s Afghan wing has claimed responsibility, according to a report by the Isis-affiliated Amaq news agency. A November suicide attack on a crowded mosque, claimed by the same group, killed more than 30 people and wounded dozens.
Some patients climbed out of the hospital, which treats military casualties, and could be seen sheltering on window ledges. Isis was also accused by local officials of killing six Red Cross employees in an ambush on a convoy in northern Afghanistan last month. It has claimed at least two other attacks on minority Shias in Kabul since last July.
“Our forces are there and there is heavy fighting,” said a defence ministry spokesman, Dawlat Waziri. He said one attacker had been killed and another two were holding out, while one soldier had been killed and three wounded. Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, said the latest attack “trampled on all human values”. “In all religions, a hospital is regarded as an immune site and attacking it is attacking the whole of Afghanistan,” he said, during an address in Kabul for International Women’s Day.
A spokesman for the public health ministry said at least three people were dead and more than 60 wounded had been taken to other hospitals. A Taliban spokesman denied responsibility, saying the movement had no connection to the attack. Abdul Qadir, a hospital employee, told Reuters he saw a gunman dressed in a white doctor’s coat take out an AK-47 assault rifle and open fire, killing at least one patient and a hospital worker.
A statement from Isis’s Amaq news agency said its fighters had attacked the hospital. The group has mounted several high-profile attacks on civilian targets in Kabul over the past year, including several on prominent Shia targets. Reuters reported that patients could be seen climbing out of the building and sheltering on window ledges outside the hospital, across the road from the heavily fortified US embassy.
The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, said the attack “trampled on all human values” in impromptu remarks during a speech for International Women’s Day in Kabul. Isis has been active in Afghanistan since 2014 but maintains a far smaller presence – and poses far less of an existential threat to the Afghan state – than the Taliban, which continues to be responsible for the majority of violence in the country.
“In all religions, a hospital is regarded as an immune site and attacking it is attacking the whole of Afghanistan,” he said. Hundreds of US airstrikes in the past year have helped to limit the group’s influence to a handful of districts in and around the eastern Nangarhar province, though Wednesday’s attack showed it continues to have the ability to strike outside those areas.
The raid on the hospital, across the road from the heavily fortified US embassy, underlines warnings by government officials that high-profile attacks in Kabul are likely to escalate this year. Gen John Nicholson, the most senior US commander in Afghanistan, has claimed American efforts have killed about one-third of Isis’s fighters and shrunk its territory by two-thirds.
The Afghan affiliate’s leader, Hafiz Saeed Khan, was killed in a US drone strike in August.
The group’s support among local people has also been limited by its trademark brutality and imposition of a blinkered vision of Islam – including bans on smoking and poppy cultivation and the annulment of government-officiated weddings – in spite of local customs.
Analysts have put the number of Isis fighters in Afghanistan at up to 2,000, though a close assessment is difficult to establish because of the uncertain toll of casualties and success of recruitment drives.
The Taliban claimed an attack last week on a police station and intelligence service office in the capital that killed and wounded dozens.