A gunman in Afghan army uniform opened fire inside Kabul's defence ministry Monday, killing two soldiers and wounding seven in an audacious strike at the heart of government claimed by the Taliban.
The attack, which the militants said was aimed at France's visiting defence minister Gerard Longuet, was the third major assault on Afghan security targets in four days and one of the worst security breaches in years.
"A person in Afghan army uniform opened fire on his comrades, killed two soldiers, injured seven others, then was targeted himself and was brought down," Afghan army spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.
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After his death, the attacker was found to be wearing a suicide vest, he said.
One of those killed was a bodyguard of the deputy defence minister, while those injured included an aide to the defence minister and a secretary to the army's chief of staff, said a senior security official speaking anonymously.
Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak was not injured in the shootout, a Western security source said separately, but it is thought that the suicide bomber was shot dead close to the minister's office.
Earlier, a military source had told AFP on condition of anonymity that three insurgents had managed to enter the building, which faces President Hamid Karzai's palace, and all were killed.
High-profile breach
The ambush inside the tightly secured compound is thought to be the most high-profile security breach since a failed attempt on Karzai's life in 2008.
France's defence chief Longuet is currently on a visit to Afghanistan but was not in the building at the time of the firefight.
A French official stressed they had seen "no evidence" that the attack was an attempt to kill Longuet, while his office said he was at Bagram airfield, more than 40 kilometres (24 miles) away, at the time.
An investigation is now under way.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP that Longuet was the target.
"The reason for conducting this attack is the invasion of Afghanistan by the French military," he said, adding that it was not carried out over the controversial banning of the Islamic full-face veil in France.
The spokesman said the attack was carried out by a sleeper agent in the Afghan National Army, according to the SITE monitoring group, which quoted a communique posted on a Taliban website.
There are some 4,000 French troops stationed in Afghanistan as part of a roughly 130,000-strong NATO-led international force.
The Islamist militia are known frequently to exaggerate claims in relation to their attacks.
String of attacks
The incident comes amid a string of serious attacks on pro-government security forces in recent days by insurgents wearing military and police uniforms.
On Friday the police chief of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, seen as a key battleground in the war, was killed in the police headquarters by an attacker in police uniform.
And on Saturday, five international and four Afghan troops died when a member of the Afghan National Army blew himself up at an army base in Laghman province, eastern Afghanistan.
That was the deadliest single attack against foreign forces since December, while Saturday was the worst day for international troops in Afghanistan since June last year, with a total of eight soldiers killed.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan Monday, six police officers were killed by a roadside bomb in Ghazni province, central Afghanistan, the provincial police chief said, in an attack also claimed by the Taliban.
In three months' time, Afghan forces are due to start taking control of security from foreign troops in eight more peaceful areas of the country, allowing for limited international withdrawals.
Afghan forces are due to take full control of security in their country in 2014, allowing a full withdrawal of foreign combat troops.
The fighting season in Afghanistan is starting to get under way as spring arrives, and Western officials including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have warned it could bring some of the bloodiest fighting yet in the near ten-year war.
