Attack on American University in Afghanistan ends with 12 dead

The violence came as the Taliban are escalating nationwide attacks.

The English-language university first opened in 2006 with USA funding, and is the country’s top institution for higher education, attracting many young Afghans.

“These advisers are not taking a combat role, but advising their Afghan counterparts”, said U.S. Army Col. Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Similarly, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah termed the attack on the American university as coward terrorist act and enmity with the people of Afghanistan and strongly condemned it.

The two foreign professors at the university were seized from their vehicle on August 7, as the kidnappers smashed the passenger window and hauled them away at gunpoint.

An explosion and gunfire have been heard at an American University in Kabul on Wednesday.

All other personnel on the campus were being evacuated, he said.

One of those trapped inside the university for several hours was Massoud Hossaini, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, who tweeted his experience and pleaded for help. Students heard a blast and gunshots.

“I went to the window to see what was going on, and I saw a person in normal clothes outside”.

“The gunfire was closer and closer, and I felt a few bullets flying over my head”, CBS’ Ahmad Mukhtar said.

Students jumped from the second floor, some injuring themselves, or barricaded themselves into classrooms when the attack happened, reports said. Later, the photographer was able to escape the attack along with nine other students through an emergency gate.

“We are stuck inside our classroom and there are bursts of gunfire”, he said. University President Mark English told The Associated Press that.

“This university is a lasting legacy of the United States in Afghanistan”. Our embassy in Kabul, as well as our North Atlantic Treaty Organisation counterparts of the Resolute Support Mission, are closely monitoring the situation as we are.

“We are a beacon, I think, of hope for many Afghan youth”.

The turmoil convulsing Helmand, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency, has left thousands of people displaced, sparking a humanitarian crisis as officials report food and water shortages.

The AP later reported that he was safe and had escaped from the school.

“We will rebuild and we will reorganize and we will restart and we will not be deterred”.

The attack on the American University comes two weeks after two university staff, an American and an Australian, were kidnapped from their auto by unknown gunmen. Foreign professors teach there. They have not been located.

Hossaini, who won the Pulitzer Price in 2012 in Breaking News Photography for taking the image of a horrified 12-year-old girl in the wake of a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, had tweeted about his ordeal, even saying it could be his last.

“From behind its fortified walls, the university has operated relatively unscathed since it opened in 2006”, NPR’s Jacki Lyden noted at the time.