KABUL — A team of burqa-clad bombers and gunmen stormed a heavily guarded residential compound used mainly by Western contractors early Wednesday, killing seven people, including a carload of Afghan passers-by and a student on his way to school, officials said. All four attackers died as well.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and described it as signaling disgust and anger at a surprise overnight visit by President Barack Obama, who had departed the country shortly before the first heavy explosion echoed across the city.
Investigators expressed doubts, however, that a multipronged attack involving a vehicle bomb and a large array of weaponry could have been marshaled so quickly, because the U.S. president’s presence was not disclosed until he was already on the ground, and he left before dawn.
Even so, the attack — the second major strike in Kabul in less than three weeks — served as the insurgents’ thunderous rejoinder to Obama’s assertion that the decade-long war has yielded sufficient security gains that Western troops can leave in 2014.
The Taliban also declared that today will mark the start of its annual spring offensive, which it said would target foreign troops, Western contractors and members of the government of President Hamid Karzai.
