Taliban Suicide Bombers Strike at Bank in Southern Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/taliban-suicide-bombers-strike-at-bank-in-southern-afghanistan.html

Version 0 of 1.

Suicide bombers attacked a bank in a provincial capital in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province. The dead included soldiers, police officers and a member of the government’s domestic intelligence agency, as well as five civilians.

The attack began shortly after 12 p.m., when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the entrance of a branch of the Kabul Bank. Three other attackers, all strapped with explosives, stormed inside, said Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The attackers were stopped by police officers guarding the second floor, where most of the bank’s business is transacted, police officials said. A shootout followed, during which two of the insurgents detonated their explosives vests, said one police official, Pacha Gul Bakhtawar. The last attacker’s suicide vest did not explode, and he was shot dead.

Given the number of staff members and customers present on the second floor, the police said that the number of dead would have been far higher had the attackers succeeded in getting there.

The dead included two Afghan soldiers, two police officers and a member of the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency. Five other people died and at least 14 were wounded, officials said.

It was not the first time insurgents have attacked branches of Kabul Bank, which is at the center of Afghanistan’s nascent banking system but came to symbolize corruption and excess because of the fraudulent loans it granted to powerful members of Afghanistan’s elite.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said that the group claimed responsibility for the attack and that the targets were government officials who were at the bank collecting their wages. Kabul Bank handles payment of government salaries.

In 2011, seven Taliban insurgents attacked a bank branch in Jalalabad, in the country’s east, as soldiers and police officers waited to collect their monthly pay. At least 18 people were killed. Last year, a suicide car bomber detonated in front of a Kabul Bank branch in Kandahar, killing at least five people.