NATO Base Targeted as Taliban Launch Assault at Kabul Airport
Policemen arrive near the Kabul military airport during a clash between insurgents and security forces on June 10, 2013. All seven militants who launched an attack Monday on Kabul airport died in the assault, Afghan police said.
An assault on Afghanistan's main airport in Kabul on Monday ended with all seven Taliban soldiers, including two suicide bombers, dead.
According to officials, only those trying to attack the airport facility--which services both civiian and military flights--were killed amid the explosions and exchange of gunfire.
"There have not been any casualties to the security forces, and we have not (received) any report of civilian casualties so far," said Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, chief of Kabul police, to reporters near the scene.
Al-Jazeera reports:
Loud explosions and bursts of small-arms fire were heard during the attack, with the US embassy sounding its "duck and cover" alarm and its loudspeakers warning that the alarm was not a drill.
"An explosion ... occurred after which a group of suicide attackers entered a building [near] Kabul airport, and started sporadic shooting," Hashmat Stanikzai, a police official, said in a statement.
Al Jazeera's Jennifer Glasse, reporting from the Afghan capital, said that a large police reinforcement was rushed to the airport which is shared by civilians and the NATO-led international force.
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