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Militants take hostages in attack on bank in southern Afghanistan Insurgents storm bank in Afghanistan’s Helmand province
(about 2 hours later)
Four suspected Taliban militants have stormed a bank in southern Helmand province and taken hostages, Afghan officials said. Afghan insurgents stormed a bank in the country’s restive southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, including three policemen, authorities said.
They said the attackers killed at least five people while firing on security forces who surrounded the building as a gun battle unfolded. In the attack, in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, five suicide bombers raided the city’s branch of the New Kabul Bank. One of the attackers blew himself up at the front entrance to allow the other four in, said Omer Zawaj, the spokesman for the provincial governor.
Omer Zawaj, the governor’s spokesman, said the attack took place in the provincial capital, Lashkah Gar, where a branch of the New Kabul Bank was attacked. Once inside, the other suspected Taliban attackers fired at security forces who arrived at the scene and surrounded the building.
Zawaj said one bomber detonated his explosives at the door of the bank, making way for the other three insurgents to enter. Helmand police spokesman, Fareed Obaid, said three police officers were among those killed.
Aslan Nawaz, the chief physician at the city’s main hospital, said it admitted more than 20 wounded people. He said five bodies were also brought in. “There are also 15 people wounded, including six members of the Afghan security forces,” he said, adding that the rest of the insurgents were killed in the gun battle.
Helmand has long been a hotbed for the insurgency, which has escalated in recent months. Earlier, the head doctor at Lashkar Gah hospital said that more than 20 people with gunshot wounds had been admitted. “We’ve also had five bodies brought in,” said Aslan Nawaz.
The attack came a day after members of the Pakistani Taliban attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, murdering more than 141 people.
The Afghan Taliban condemned the Peshawar attack, saying killing innocents was un-Islamic. The group did however claim responsibility for a deadly attack on a French-run school in Kabul last week, in which a German aid worker was killed.
In the eastern province of Nangahar, the chief police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashraqiwal said that 11 insurgents were killed in a drone strike on Tuesday.
They were in a vehicle when the drone struck, he said, adding that the dead included two insurgent commanders.
Afghanistan’s war with the insurgents, whose leadership is based in Pakistan, has escalated in recent months, and angered the president, Ashraf Ghani, who has vowed to bring peace to the country.