The death toll from a 27-hour Taliban siege of Kandahar airport has jumped to 50, Afghan officials said on Thursday, after a conference in Pakistan shored up international support for reviving peace talks.
Eleven suicide attackers on Tuesday breached the high-security complex which also houses a joint NATO-Afghan base, taking families hostage and triggering pitched firefights with soldiers.
The raid, which saw militants blowing themselves up among civilians before the area was secured, is the most serious attack in 14 years of war on the complex, the largest military installation in the south of the country.
“Fifty of our innocent countrymen, including 10 soldiers, two policemen and 38 civilians, were martyred in the attack,” the Defence
Ministry said in a statement. |It added that 37 people, including 17 army men, were wounded.
“A group of 11 terrorists attacked a bazaar and a school in the airport complex, took up positions in the area and (some of them) detonated their suicide vests among civilians.”
Witnesses said the militants had taken families hostage, using them as
“human shields” and slowing down the military’s clearance operation.