KABUL — Acting on an intelligence tip, Afghan police said they arrested five would-be suicide bombers Thursday who were trying to enter Kabul, thwarting a major attack and capturing the largest such team ever in the capital.
Police think the bombers were sent by an al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group based in Pakistan, and their capture follows widespread rumors that militants were planning attacks in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul.
Heavily armed police stopped the would-be bombers about 7 a.m. at a checkpoint in the southeastern edge of the city as they traveled in a sport utility vehicle with explosive vests beneath the engine block, said Abdul Ghafar, deputy commander of the Afghan National Police crisis unit.
Ghafar said police had been given a description of the vehicle and sealed off the area. Police said they thought the would-be bombers were headed for a safe house in the capital to make final preparations for their suicide assault.
“If this team had made it through, it would have been a disaster,” Ghafar said. “I would call this a major blow to the terrorists.”
Police said the five men, ranging in age from 20 to 25, refused to give their names or nationalities. But authorities were convinced they were sent by the Haqqani group, a Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban faction with close ties to al-Qaeda.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the Taliban were unaware of the apparent plot, saying: “We have no information on these people.”
The five were shown to journalists at a heavily guarded police base on the city’s outskirts, along with their vehicle and bags containing explosive material and suicide harnesses. They stood silently with their backs to the journalists, their eyes covered by blindfolds and hoods and their wrists in handcuffs.
The Haqqani group has been blamed for other attacks in Kabul, including the Oct. 28 assault on a guesthouse used by U.N. workers. Eleven people were killed, including five U.N. staff and the three attackers. The Haqqani group may have played a role in the Dec. 30 suicide attack that killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer at a tightly secured CIA base in Khost province.
The network’s ailing leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a hero of the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. A U.S. missile strike Feb. 18 apparently targeted Haqqani’s son Sirajuddin, who essentially runs the group. Instead the missile killed another son, Mohammed, and three associates.
Also Thursday, NATO reported one international service member was killed in fighting with insurgents in eastern Afghanistan but gave no further details. It was the 10th combat death among the NATO force this month.
