KABUL: Simultaneous Taliban strikes on government buildings in Kabul took a lead from the Mumbai attacks in a show of sophistication that underscores the connections between international terrorists, analysts said on Thursday.

The three attacks on Wednesday, the main one on the justice ministry in the heart of the city, also highlight challenges facing any new American strategy in the region seven years after the US declared a “war on terror”.

“There is a strong similarity between what happened in Mumbai and in Kabul,” said Haroun Mir, analyst and co-founder of Afghanistan’s Centre for Research and Policy Studies.Five gunmen who stormed the justice building – opening fire as they ran through corridors, kicking down doors to shoot people inside – appeared young, urban and well-trained as were the Mumbai attackers, he and witnesses said.

Just minutes before, three suicide bombers blew themselves up at the prisons directorate and the education ministry – another similarity with the November attacks on three locations in India.

The justice ministry gunmen did not intend to merely blow themselves up in a typical Taliban tactic, Mir said.

“These are people who wanted to take control and try to kill as many people as they could,” he said.

They were armed with rifles and other weapons, which showed they probably intended to take hostages and drag the drama out, he said.

Intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh also told reporters Wednesday that the gunmen, aged between 20 and 25, were intent on “mass killing” and creating a drama that could have lasted for days.

Investigations would pursue messages to Pakistan found on their mobile phones at the scene “calling for the blessings of their mastermind”, Saleh said.

Mir said Wednesday’s bloodshed and a series of similarly “well-prepared and executed attacks” last year “shows that those who are committing these kind of attacks are graduates of the same school somewhere in Pakistan.”

“They are not ordinary Taliban – regular Taliban suicide bombers are most of the time not too effective,” he said. “These young boys are well-trained and indoctrinated,” he said.

It also showed that despite US pressure on militant training camps in Pakistan “the schools are still operational and training for terrorist attacks in India, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” he said.

Mir said he believed the attacks may have been intended as a show of strength to Richard Holbrooke as he tours the region to come up with a new US strategy to tackle extremist violence straddling the border.

But political analyst and author Waheed Mujda said the Taliban warned months ago they were planning action involving up to 10 suicide attackers.

Wednesday’s strikes appeared to have been revenge for the government’s treatment of Taliban prisoners, he said, with the insurgents making a similar statement when they claimed the action.

But it showed “that there is a strong network inside Kabul city which works with them and supports them,” he said.

US-based defence and terrorism expert Anthony Cordesman said the various rebel factions operating in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion had “gotten steadily more sophisticated.”

“We can expect during the course of the next year to see them borrow more and more techniques from other terrorist attacks, other insurgencies and innovate on their own,” said Cordesman, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Militant networks were under political and military pressure, with the region moving under a new US spotlight and as Afghan security forces gain strength, Afghan defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.

This led them to find new ways to inflict higher casualties and grab more headlines to suggest strength, he said.

With the justice ministry so close to the presidential palace “if they could have extended this for a day or two like in Mumbai this would have been a marvellous media sweep for them,” he said.

Afghan officials have praised security forces for acting quickly to kill the attackers and prevent them from creating even more havoc.

But nonetheless the group did substantial damage, killing 26 Afghans and reinforcing fears about the future of a country that has been unable to stop the bloodshed even with the help of some of the world’s largest militaries.

“How long can this continue?” Kabul resident Rajih Rahmatullah Khuda Yar told AFP outside the barricaded and blood-splattered justice ministry on Thursday.

“When I left home this morning, I kissed my children goodbye because I am not sure I will return,” he said.—AFP