President Hamid Karzai has condemned Wednesday's suicide attack on Afghanistan's spy agency offices in Kabul warning insurgents that they will not achieve anything with such violence.
In a statement released by the presidential office Wednesday evening, Karzai praised the quick reaction of the National Directorate of Security staff in repelling the attack and told the insurgents that they will not achieve their aims by this means but instead will face a very strong reaction from security forces.
The assault began at midday when a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb at the gate of a National Directorate of Security (NDS) office in Kabul's Sedarat area as another five men attempted to storm the site.
All five attackers were killed along with one of the NDS guards in the ensuing gunfight which ended within 40 minutes.
"Unfortunately, one NDS official was killed in the incident, but the attack was strongly repelled by the Afghan Security Forces," NDS deputy spokesman Shafiqullah Taheri said at a joint press conference with the Ministry of Interior (MOI) in Kabul.
"It demonstrated the abilities of the Afghan security forces to strongly repel the attack and kill the attackers," MOI spokesman Sediq Sediqi added. "It's good point for the people of Afghanistan to know that their forces have the ability to protect them."
Around 31 other people – both security forces and civilians – were wounded in the incident, officials said.
Police investigations have uncovered another mini-van in the same street loaded with explosives, weapons and ammunitions. The explosives have been defused.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack via SMS messages to media about an hour after the incident, but a Taliban spokesman was earlier quoted by Reuters as not knowing anything about a car bomb in Kabul.
There is some speculation that the Taliban is seeking to capitalise on the incident which may have been executed by another insurgent group.