At least 8 killed in Taliban attack on Kandahar airport

A Taliban assault on an airport in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar that has been underway for almost 24 hours has killed 37 people, the defence ministry said on Wednesday.

An attack targeting Kandahar worldwide airport in Afghanistan on Tuesday evening claimed the lives of at least nineteen people and left at least twenty other injured.

It said the dead included 38 civilians, 10 Afghan soldiers and two police.

Taliban insurgents attacked a perimeter section of the heavily fortified site, which contains both a civilian airport and a large military base. After fierce battles with Afghan troops overnight, several surviving attackers were scattered throughout several airport buildings Wednesday and continued fighting with Afghan security forces into the afternoon, officials said.

The Taliban militants wearing suicide vests breached the front gate of the facility in what a pro-Taliban website referred to as an attack “against domestic and foreign forces”.

“Khanisheen district was under attack in the past few days, but yesterday, the Taliban intensified their fight against the security forces and finally were able to get the control of whole district”, he added.

Passengers from at least one commercial flight were caught up in the attacks Tuesday and were stuck in the passenger terminal until the fighting ceased.

The attack in Kandahar province – a Taliban heartland – comes as the insurgents have expanded their footprint in Afghanistan in recent months.

Ghani, addressing the conference on Wednesday, had said that military operations in Pakistan had “unintended consequences”, displacing not only 350,000-500,000 refugees onto Afghan soil, but also sending militants fleeing to Afghanistan.

Both Afghan government forces and Taliban militants, according to local analysts, have been trying their best to take more grounds and strengthen their positions ahead of snowfall in the mountainous central Asian country.

They briefly captured the strategic northern city of Kunduz in September in their most spectacular victory in 14 years. “Preliminary information showed that 37 civilians were killed and 18 others wounded”, a security source told Xinhua anonymously.

The battle was going as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif were attending a conference in Islamabad on December 9 aimed at bolstering regional support for Afghanistan.

The violence has also spilled over into Pakistan.

Ghani’s willingness to visit Afghanistan’s neighbor signaled a renewed push to mend badly frayed cross-border ties, which could help jumpstart long-stalled peace talks with the insurgents.