Three bodies lay close together on the fifth-floor staircase, scene of the final stand of an 18-hour siege. Slight and dressed in shalwar kameez, without body armour or ammunition vest, one clean-shaven fighter had worn black office shoes for his role defending a half-built high-rise against Afghan and Norwegian commando units backed by Apache attack helicopters.
An unexploded rocket dangled from the half-finished concrete ceiling nearby, testament to the ferocity of the morning assault that ended the suicide mission.
The five men who had commandeered and then died in the construction site were part of perhaps the most ambitious insurgent offensive in more than a decade of war. Co-ordinated assaults on high-profile military, government and diplomatic targets in the east, west and centre of Kabul came as three other insurgent teams attacked cities in eastern Afghanistan. A total of 36 insurgents were killed during battles that ended after dawn broke on Monday.
The fighting was a reminder of the insurgent threat at a time when foreign troops are already drawing down. Combat troops are due to be home by the end of 2014. But it was also a display of the growing ability and confidence of Afghan security forces, who handled the majority of the fighting without western support.
The president, Hamid Karzai, said the attack showed a "failure" by Afghan and Nato intelligence. "The fact terrorists were able to enter Kabul and other provinces was an intelligence failure for us and especially for Nato," Karzai's office said in a statement.
The Taliban fighters kept swaths of the capital awake with rattling gunfire and loud explosions through the night, but the civilian and security forces toll was relatively low. Eight policemen and three civilians were killed, according to the interior minister, Bismillah Mohammadi. The rapid security response and the militants' choice of very well-defended targets may have played a role in limiting the number of casualties.
Among buildings that took direct and indirect fire were the US, German and British embassies, and some coalition and Afghan government buildings, a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition said.
Mohammadi said one militant arrested in the east had confessed that the fighters had ties to the Haqqani network, a ruthless Taliban-linked insurgent group based in Pakistan, and blamed for most high-profile assaults in the Afghan capital.
A Taliban spokesman said the Haqqani network had played no role in the attack. Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters that the insurgents had planned the offensives for months, creating model replicas of targeted buildings so that fighters could rehearse their attacks.
Bystanders outside the high-rise at the edge of the diplomatic district swore the fighters were Pakistani, although there was no evidence. "You can tell he was Pakistani, he is so thin," said a teenager, Najibullah, after peering into the guard cabin of a nearby compound belonging to the intelligence services, where a sixth insurgent's body was stowed.
The insurgent had been shot dead in an apparent diversionary attack that launched the fighting. As the militants drove up to the building site in an SUV, one fighter jumped down into the street and ran to attack the heavily defended gate of the National Directorate of Security complex, said Major Sayed Abdullah, a National Directorate of Security (NDS) commando who was at the gate.
He said the fighter was killed almost immediately, but the attack gave his comrades time to take up their positions. After a grenade bounced without exploding, they rammed the site gate open with their car.
Guards dropped their weapons and ran to join unarmed construction workers when they saw the militants pull up. They spent several hours cowering in the basement, and were taken into police custody, Abdullah said.
There are strong suspicions that the fighters must have stashed weapons and other supplies in the building in preparation for the attack, because their ammunition held out so long, another intelligence official said. Bullet casings were scattered throughout the building, and empty water bottles and cartons of cream lay near a grenade and a tangle of wires that soldiers warned could be a booby trap.
Hours after the attack ended, US troops with sniffer dogs checked the building for undetonated explosives, as security officials inured to violence snapped pictures of the bodies and discussed the support the fighters must have received.
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