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14 Killed, Including Foreigners, in Kabul Cafe Blasts 16 Killed, Mostly Foreigners, in Attack on Kabul Restaurant
(about 3 hours later)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Three Taliban suicide bombers struck a restaurant popular with Westerners in downtown Kabul on Friday, setting off a blast outside that shook the city’s diplomatic quarter and killed at least 14 people, including foreigners, the police said. KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban struck a restaurant popular with Westerners in downtown Kabul on Friday in what appeared to be a well-coordinated assault, with a suicide bomber clearing a path for two gunmen, who rushed in and opened fire on the patrons dining inside, the police said. At least 16 people were killed, most of them foreigners.
Police officers arriving on the scene scrambled to determine if other attackers with guns were holed up inside the cafe, Taverna du Liban, as reported on Afghan television news stations. The police could not immediately confirm the reports. The attack appeared to be one of the deadliest against Western civilians in Kabul since 2001, with Afghan and Western officials saying as many of 13 of the dead were expatriates. And the Taliban’s choice of a lightly guarded restaurant marked a departure for the insurgents, who have more often sought to strike fortified government buildings and high-profile symbols of the Western presence in Afghanistan, like the American Embassy and a building believed to house the Central Intelligence Agency station in Kabul.
“I can’t exactly say if there is an attacker inside the compound,” said Sediq Seddiqqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. “Police are trying to help those people wounded during the explosion.” Those attacks have succeeded in generating headlines but inflicting relatively few casualties in the past few years. A Taliban bombing earlier this month at the entrance to Camp Eggers, a large base for the American-led military coalition in the center of Kabul, did not inflict any casualties, for instance. The base is less than a mile from the restaurant.
Gen. Zaher Zaher, the police chief, put the death toll at 14. The restaurant hit on Friday, Taverna du Liban, a Lebanese restaurant whose clientele is made up largely of expatriates, had almost none of the security of those other targets, like cement blast walls or checkpoints blocking off the street where it is located.
The police swarmed through the neighborhood, Wazir Akbar Khan, after the blast, blocking off streets and setting up roadblocks. Officials said the bomber had detonated explosives outside Taverna du Liban, a Lebanese restaurant whose clientele is made up largely of expatriates and well-heeled Afghans. The initial blast appeared to have been powerful. It was heard miles away and shook windows in the immediate neighborhood, a district that is home to numerous embassies and shops that serve Western aid workers, journalists and other foreign civilians who live in the city.
Within an hour of the attack, the Taliban emailed reporters saying it had targeted “a foreign restaurant where foreign invaders were having dinner.”
The Taliban, who routinely inflate the impact of their attacks, claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties and said they had killed a high-ranking German official. That claim could not be immediately confirmed.
The bombing was the second in less than two weeks that targeted foreigners in Kabul. On Jan. 4, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an explosion at an entrance to a predominantly American military base in the heart of the city. The American-led coalition said there had been no casualties.
The restaurant explosion on Friday shook windows across much of central Kabul, and sporadic bursts of gunfire could be heard for minutes afterward.
Western embassies and the United Nations warned their staff members to stay away from neighborhood, or stay inside if they were nearby. The American Embassy, a number of European embassies and the headquarters of the NATO-led coalition are all within a mile of where the blast occurred, though most are on streets blocked by multiple barricades and blast walls.
The restaurant, in contrast, is relatively easy to reach on foot or in a vehicle. Guests are ordinarily patted down by security guards before entering, but the guards would not have searched a car approaching the restaurant.
The Norwegian Embassy is on the same block. There was no immediate word whether the embassy had sustained any damage.