Taliban come back, attack on Kabul, kill 8

Afghan security forces killed a minimum of eight insurgents throughout an early morning raid in Kabul on Thursday, with authorities saying they'd thwarted a Taliban mass attack on the capital when a seven-hour gun battle.

Soldiers from Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), launched the raid in darkness, coming into a building regarding an hour when midnight in Kabul's Pul-e-Charkhi district that the insurgents were using as a base.

"We have already killed eight insurgents and conjointly seized explosives. They aimed to enter a building in Kabul and launch a combined attack on security forces, government offices or offices belonging to foreigners," an NDS spokesman told Reuters.

The Taliban issued a press release denying that Thursday's operation was against their fighters, though the insurgents usually play down their defeats and inflate successes.

Taliban militants launched a giant attack in central Kabul on April fifteen, occupying a high-rise construction web site and pounding the city's diplomatic and business centre with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms hearth till they were killed.

On June 22, Afghan security forces fought a day-long battle with militants when a Taliban attack on a lakeside hotel on the outskirts of Kabul.

But security forces and NATO-led foreign troops say the sporadic attacks don't purpose to weaknesses in Afghan forces and intelligence prior a withdrawal by most foreign combat troops to be completed by 2014.