Suicide bomber attacks key ministry in Kabul

Kabul's growing security crisis was graphically exposed yesterday when a suicide bomber breached the heavily guarded information ministry building and blew himself up, killing five people and wounding about 20 others. The blast, a rare assault on a high-security site, destroyed the building's entrance, tearing open its steel gate and showering glass into the street. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group, said foreign advisers in the ministry were the targets of the attack. He said there were three attackers in all. They threw grenades at ministry guards and opened fire on them before advancing into the building, where one of the militants detonated the explosive belt he was wearing. The blast damaged part of the first floor of the ministry, which is several hundred meters from the presidential palace in central Kabul, and forced the authorities to evacuate ministry officials. President Hamid Karzai said the violence was an attempt by extremists to destabilize diplomatic overtures towards opposition groups. "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. But the insurgency, and its recent proliferation in Kabul, is just one of a growing number of acute problems facing the Afghan authorities. Today a leading British security thinktank warns that a looming food crisis in the country poses an even greater threat than the insurgents. An estimated 8.4 million Afghans, as much as a third of the population, face famine this winter, the Royal United Services Institute warns. Afghanistan may be on "the brink of a calamity" that could undermine much of the progress achieved in areas such as the north and west, ostensibly free of insurgent activity, it says. The situation in some areas is so bad that some Afghans are eating grass, the briefing paper, Afghanistan: Preventing an Approaching Crisis, adds. "If the international community is found wanting, we can expect increasing frustration and anger from a population which once saw international intervention as a source of hope," it warns. It continues: "The fact that many areas vulnerable to famine have reduced or rejected [opium] poppy farming is an added irony." Paul Smyth of the institute said last night: "To maintain its moral authority to act in Afghanistan, the international community must be timely, concerted and effective in action." In August, the UN World Food Program estimated that Afghanistan would need 25,000 tonnes of mixed commodities in emergency aid, and an additional 70,000 tonnes before next February. Because of the threat to road convoys from insurgents and bandits, and limited access to rural communities, only an airlift could meet the food needs of the Afghan population, the institute says. Yesterday's attack in Kabul was the latest episode in escalating violence in Afghanistan this year - the bloodiest period since the Taliban's ousting in 2001. Foreigners are increasingly the targets. One of the guards who survived the information ministry attack told the Guardian of his battle with the militants. Sitting on a hospital bed in his blood-stained shirt and cradling a heavily bandaged hand, 25-year-old Amir Muhammad described hearing gunfire and running into the ministry to find his best friend shot dead. He said he engaged the attackers in a gunfight lasting five minutes before the bomber blew himself up. "They were trying to get up the stairs, but I kept firing, then the bomber detonated and I was thrown into the street."