CHARIKAR, Afghanistan — Six suicide bombers attacked a governor’s security meeting Sunday in one of Afghanistan’s most secure provinces, killing 22 people, injuring 37 and driving home the point that the Taliban is able to strike at will virtually anywhere in the country.
The governor of Parwan, a relatively peaceful eastern province 30 miles north of Kabul, survived. He said he picked up an assault rifle and shot at least one of the attackers dead from the waiting room of his office.
Two other insurgents detonated their vests, causing most of the deaths and burning part of the governor’s offices. Cars were wrecked by shrapnel and bullets. Broken glass and body parts littered a lawn.
The bold daylight assault follows a similar attack by suicide bombers at a major Kabul hotel in June and the downing of a U.S. helicopter full of U.S. special operations troops only 35 miles away from Kabul. The attacks in and close to the capital raise more questions about Afghanistan’s ability to defend itself as the U.S.-led coalition hands more of the country over to its struggling forces.
Police said the assault Sunday began outside the front gate, where a car bomber set off an explosion that smashed through a wall of the compound, allowing five other insurgents toting assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers to enter. The attack interrupted a provincial security meeting attended by Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi, his police chief, intelligence director, a local army commander and at least two NATO advisers.
All the attackers wore suicide vests, and at least three of them were dressed as police officers, police said. Two attackers made it across a courtyard and detonated their vests inside the governor’s headquarters building. Three others were killed before they could enter, police said.
Salangi told The Associated Press that he and his aides fired at insurgents from his offices.
“I had an AK-47. I shot him (an attacker) from the window of my waiting room,” said Salangi, who once was police chief of Kabul and a rebel fighter during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He said it was the second time in the past month he was targeted by an assassination attempt.
Sixteen of the dead were civilian government employees and six were policemen, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry.
