Taliban breaches Afghan defence Headquarters, kills two

A gunman in Afghan army uniform opened fire inside Kabul's defence ministry Monday, killing two soldiers and wounding seven in an audacious strike at the heart of government claimed by the Taliban. The attack, which militants said targeted France's visiting defence minister Gerard Longuet, was the third against Afghan security targets by uniformed insurgents in four days and one of the worst security breaches in years.
"A person in Afghan army uniform opened fire on his comrades, killed two soldiers, injured seven others, then was targeted himself and was brought down," Afghan army spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP. After his death, the attacker was found to be wearing a suicide vest, Azimi added. The insurgent had entered the building and made it to the floor above the office of defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, where he began shooting, said a defence ministry official on condition of anonymity.
The attacker shot dead a bodyguard of the deputy defence minister, while the injured included another of the deputy minister's bodyguards, an aide to the defence minister and a secretary to the army chief of staff, said a senior security official, also speaking anonymously.
Longuet is currently visiting Afghanistan but his office said he was not in Kabul at the time, while a French official stressed they had seen "no evidence" that the attack was an attempt to kill him. Earlier, a military source told AFP that three insurgents had entered the building, which faces President Hamid Karzai's palace on a top-security compound, and all were killed. The attack is thought to be the most high-profile security breach since a failed attempt on Karzai's life in 2008.
It comes three months before foreign troops start handing control of security to their Afghan counterparts in eight areas of the country before a full handover in 2014, although Afghan forces are already in control in Kabul. The attack also raises fresh questions about the Taliban's ability to infiltrate Afghan security forces, although it is not yet clear whether the attacker was a soldier or had simply used a uniform to carry out the assault. On Friday the police chief of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, seen as a key battleground in the war, was killed in the police headquarters by an attacker in police uniform.
And on Saturday, five international and four Afghan troops died when a member of the Afghan National Army blew himself up at an army base in Laghman province, eastern Afghanistan. Saturday was the worst day for international troops in Afghanistan since June last year, with a total of eight soldiers killed. Questioned about the issue of infiltration after Saturday's attack, Azimi insisted "intelligence filters" were in place to screen candidates who wanted to join the Afghan army and that these were being beefed up.