KABUL, Oct 30: Taliban commandos stormed an Afghan ministry in the heart of Kabul on Thursday, shooting their way into the building where one of them blew himself up and killed five people.

The bomb exploded in a conference room underneath the office of the minister, Abdul Karim Khoram, but he was not in the building at the time, ministry spokesman Hameed Nasiri Wardak said.

“I can say that the target was the minister,” he said. Khoram was badly wounded in a suicide blast in Kandahar in May.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the daring attack, calling it an attempt to hinder government efforts to secure dialogue with the militants to end a seven-year resistance movement.

Three assailants opened fire on the police guards outside the ministry of information and culture before entering its cavernous hall, where the suicide bomber launched the attack, said Amir Mohammad, a police guard who was wounded in the blast.

“They (attackers) were running. They opened fire on our guard first and then they entered” the building, Mohammad said from his hospital bed in Kabul.

The powerful blast threw Mohammed onto the street, where he lay unconscious among shattered glass and pools of blood.

Five people were killed in the attack, including a policeman, three ministry employees and another civilian, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Another 21 were wounded, said Abdul Fahim, a spokesman for the health ministry which supervises the hospitals where the injured were taken.

“Our enemies are trying to undermine the recent efforts by the government for a peaceful solution to end the violence,” Karzai said in a statement. Senior Afghan and Pakistani officials vowed on Tuesday to seek dialogue with the Taliban to end violence. The pledge was agreed at a jirga as part of a process initiated by US President George W. Bush and his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in 2006.

The Afghan government has said it wants talks with Taliban leaders in an effort at reconciliation. The Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan said the two sides recently had contacts in Saudi Arabia.

The ministry that was attacked is in the centre of the city, at a busy intersection lined with shops. One of the side walls of the building collapsed, while glass littered the roads nearby and office equipment was scattered over the area. The light-blue metal gates were twisted from being flung open.

Taliban’s claim

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told the AP three militants stormed the building by throwing hand-grenades at the guards at the main gate.

A man named Naqibullah from the Khost province carried out the suicide attack, Mujahid said. The other two men fled, he said.

“The suicide bomber targeted foreign experts,” he said.

It was not possible to confirm if there were any foreign nationals in the building at the time.

Abdul Rahim, a witness, said he heard machine-gun shots and saw a policeman lying on the ground, then saw the explosion that rocked the building.

While militants regularly use suicide attacks against Afghan and foreign forces around the country, they have been rare in Kabul.

On July 7, a suicide attacker set off explosives outside the gates of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing more than 60 people and wounding 146.

Separately, four policemen were killed on Thursday in Panjwayi district of the Kandahar province when their vehicle struck a newly planted mine, said Zulmai Ayubi, the provincial governor’s spokesman. He blamed the Taliban for the attack.—AP/AFP