MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan \u2014 A 25-hour gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif city ended late Monday, after a bloody weekend assault on an air base in India near the Pakistan border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Separately Monday a Taliban truck bomb struck a compound housing foreign civilian contractors near Kabul airport, wounding dozens of people just hours after a suicide bomber blew himself up around the same area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lethal assaults on Indian installations threaten to derail Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bold diplomatic outreach to arch-rival Pakistan following his first official visit to Afghanistan last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the raid on the diplomatic mission in northern Afghanistan, which left at least one policeman dead and 11 others wounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gunfights and grenade explosions echoed as commandos shimmied down a rope from a helicopter onto the roof of a nearby building from where assailants had launched the attack on the tightly-guarded compound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The clearance operation is over and all three armed assailants have been killed,” government spokesman Shir Jan Durrani said, 25 hours after the siege began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are still doing room-to-room searches. The area is absolutely under government control.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strongman provincial governor Atta Mohammad Noor oversaw the operation armed with an AK47, denouncing the attackers as the “enemies of Afghanistan.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Security officials said the operation was prolonged as commandos proceeded cautiously in the residential area to avoid civilian casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An Indian official, who hunkered down in a secure area within the diplomatic enclave as the attack unfolded, told AFP by telephone Sunday that all consulate employees were safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Local police officials said some consulate workers had been evacuated during the fierce fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attack followed a raid over the weekend by Islamist insurgents on an air force base in the northern Indian state of Punjab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seven soldiers were confirmed killed in the raid on the Pathankot base, which triggered a 14-hour gun battle Saturday and fresh rounds of firing Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indian troops backed by helicopters searched the base Monday, with an official saying that the fifth attacker had been gunned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are moving step by step to sanitize the area and it’s too early to say when the operation will be over,” said a military official who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United Jihad Council, a conglomerate of Pakistani proxy Islamist groups fighting in Indian-controlled Kashmir, has claimed responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The brazen assault \u2014 a rare targeting of an Indian military installation outside Kashmir \u2014 threatens to undermine the fragile peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Proxy War’ <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The spike in violence came about a week after Modi paid a surprise visit to Pakistan, the first by an Indian premier in 11 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The visit immediately followed a whirlwind tour of Kabul, where Modi inaugurated an Indian-built parliament complex and gave three Russian-made helicopters to the Afghan government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India has been a key supporter of Kabul’s post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a “proxy war” in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistan \u2014 the historic backer of the Taliban \u2014 has long been accused of assisting the insurgents, especially with attacks on Indian targets in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taliban have also stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan, underscoring a worsening security situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Taliban truck bomber Monday struck the outer wall of Camp Baron, a heavily-guarded residential compound for foreign contractors, wounding 30 people including women and children, Afghan officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US Pentagon named the compound as Camp Sullivan, adding that the attack caused no military casualties but NATO coalition troops were helping carry out medical evacuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bombing, which was strongly felt across downtown Kabul, occurred close to where a suicide bomber struck earlier in the day, causing no casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest unrest coincides with a renewed international push to revive peace talks with the resurgent militant movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Jan. 11 Afghanistan and Pakistan are set to hold a first round of dialogue, also involving the US and China, to try to lay out a comprehensive roadmap for peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistan, which wields considerable influence over the Afghan Taliban, hosted a milestone first round of talks in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the negotiations stalled when the insurgents belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attack on the consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif was the latest in a series of assaults on Indian targets in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2008 a car bomb at the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 60 people and the facility was again hit by a suicide strike in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 25-hour gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif city ended late Monday, after a bloody weekend assault on an air base in India near the Pakistan border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":91671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":33,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2793],"class_list":["post-55023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7LHZXBQJ25GQDKCBDVBGMX6QXA","arc_canonical_url":"\/home\/2016\/01\/04\/siege-near-india-s-afghan-consulate-ends-after-25-hours\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n