Afghans attack assassin's lair

NY Times:

Afghan security forces attacked a house early Wednesday occupied by people suspected of plotting the foiled assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai. Officials said the clash left three militants dead, one of them a woman, and also killed a child. Three intelligence agents were also killed during the attack, according to reports.

Government officials announced the operation at a news conference in Kabul, the capital. They said the house was in a poor district in the western part of the city. They did not give the age of the child.

One of the officials, Amrullah Saleh, director of the National Security Directorate, said the operation was based on information given under interrogation by a person who had infiltrated the security forces and was arrested shortly after Sunday’s assassination attempt on Mr. Karzai. The person gave three addresses in Kabul, and all of them were raided Wednesday, Mr. Saleh said.

The two sides fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic guns at each other over several hours, The Associated Press quoted Mr. Saleh as saying.

In the attack on the hide-out of those suspected in the assassination, he said, the government troops finally destroyed the two-story house with heavy weapons fire after the third intelligence agent had been killed and it was clear that the militants would not surrender, The A.P. reported.

One of the dead militants had supplied weapons used in the attack on Mr. Karzai, The A.P. quoted Mr. Saleh as saying.

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The Afghans still have not learned to not mess around with these people. As soon as they took fire, they should have destroyed the place. Perhaps they thought there was some value to capturing the assassins, but once they were fired on, the chances of that were remote and certainly not worth the loss of three of their own people.