KABUL • Militants raided an army outpost in the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday, killing 11 soldiers and wounding 15 others in the fourth major attack in the country in less than 10 days.
The spate of violence is putting the United States' new, more aggressive strategy under the spotlight.
Afghan Ministry of Defence officials said five gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles attacked the outpost near one of the main military academies, the Marshal Fahim National Defence University, just before dawn.
Security officials at the scene said the gunmen had used a ladder to get over a wall into the post.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack, in which four of the gunmen were killed and one captured.
It came two days after an ambulance bomb in the city centre killed more than 100 people, and just over a week after an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel, also in Kabul, killed at least 25 people. Both were claimed by the Taleban.
Last Wednesday, an assault by ISIS fighters on the office of aid group Save the Children in the eastern city of Jalalabad killed five people.
The unrelenting violence underscores the frustrating reality in Afghanistan: Despite more than 16 years of fighting by the US-led coalition and Afghan security forces, terrorist groups are again growing stronger.
"ISIS has lost land, but has not surrendered its arms, and is looking for land in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia to, in this way, revive the idea of the Islamic caliphate," Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said last month.
Mr Krishnadev Calamur, a senior editor at The Atlantic, said the Taleban's "resilience and the apparent ease with which it continues to strike at the heart of the Afghan state underscores the challenge its government faces in bringing stability to the country".
The violence has put pressure on President Ashraf Ghani and his US allies, who have expressed growing confidence that a new, more aggressive military strategy has succeeded in driving Taleban insurgents back from major provincial centres.
The US has stepped up its assistance to Afghan security forces and its air strikes against the Taleban and other militant groups, aiming to break a stalemate and force the insurgents to the negotiating table.
However, the Taleban has dismissed suggestions that it has been weakened, and said Saturday's bombing was a message to President Donald Trump.
"The Islamic Emirate has a clear message for Trump and his hand kissers, that if you go ahead with a policy of aggression and speak from the barrel of a gun, don't expect Afghans to grow flowers in response," Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, using the term the Islamist militants use to describe themselves.
The US and Afghanistan have accused neighbouring Pakistan of helping the Taleban in a bid to undermine old rival India's growing influence in Afghanistan.
Mr Ghani said yesterday that the Taleban claim of responsibility for the Saturday blast showed that the militants' "overlord" wanted to make a statement of defiance.
But Pakistan, which denies accusations that it fosters the Afghan war, condemned the attack yesterday, as it did the Saturday blast.
The surge of violence is unlikely to sway the US strategy, or breathe life into stalled efforts to get peace talks going.
The US military and the Afghan government say big attacks on civilians are evidence that the militants are being squeezed in the countryside. Mr Trump has condemned the Saturday attack, saying it "renews our resolve and that of our Afghan partners".
Mr Ghani, embroiled in confrontation with provincial powerbrokers defying central rule, faces anger from an increasingly frustrated population, who want him to set aside political divisions and focus on security.
Kabul remains on high alert as the city braces itself for further violence. Security warnings sent to foreigners in recent days said ISIS militants were planning to attack supermarkets, hotels and shops frequented by foreigners.
Several foreign organisations, including humanitarian groups, are reassessing their operations.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, WASHINGTON POST
