Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Monday a coordinated attack on the country’s capital Kabul and three provinces on Sunday were a failure on the part of NATO and domestic intelligence forces.
“The fact that terrorists were able to infiltrate Kabul and other provinces is an intelligence failure for us and especially for NATO, and should be seriously investigated,” the Afghan leader said in a statement.
He, however, praised the country’s security officers for preventing further escalation of violence and saving the lives of dozens of civilians, saying they “proved to the people their ability to defend their land on their own.”
According to the presidential press service, four civilians and 11 security officers were killed on Sunday and overnight in a series of attacks on Kabul’s heavily guarded government district and the eastern Nangarhar, Logar and Paktia provinces. 32 civilians and 46 officers were injured.
The attacks came as Western forces prepare to leave the country under a plan to hand over full responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014.
Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the violence, which they described as a “coordinated attack” to demonstrate that its members can strike whenever and wherever they chose.
A spokesman for the militants said the attack targeted the embassies of Germany and the U.K., as well as the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
