KABUL— In the latest militant strike on the Afghan capital, Taliban gunmen backed by a suicide car bomber attacked an international aid group’s compound Friday, killing two guards and setting off an hours-long street battle with police in the heart of Kabul.
The attack, the second in the city in just over a week, also left four International Organization for Migration workers wounded, including an Italian woman badly burned by a grenade. Thirteen police were wounded, while all six attackers died in the assault, authorities said.
The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack on a guest house used by the aid group in an upscale neighborhood.
At the scene of the siege, dozens of Afghan police took cover behind blast walls and rushed through thick smoke from the bomb. At least one wounded officer was seen being helped away by his comrades.
The insurgents have unleashed bombings and assassinations across the country, testing Afghan security forces’ ability to respond with reduced help from international forces, who have begun a pullout that will see most foreign troops out by the end of 2014.
A Nepalese guard and an Afghan police officer providing security to the compound died in the assault as well as all of the attackers, said Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi.
The attackers stormed the building with grenade launchers after blowing open the compound’s gate using a car bomb, Salangi said. He said police evacuated the guest house with none of its residents killed.
From when the initial blast shook much of the city in the late afternoon until well past nightfall, fighting was still going on in the upscale Shahr-i-Now neighborhood, home to several international groups’ fortified compounds as well as the headquarters of the Afghan Public Protection Force and a hospital run by the National Directorate for Security.
Security forces were able to enter the building in late evening and by 10:30 p.m. the siege was over, according to Sediq Sediqi , spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the insurgent fighters killed several people in the compound, which he said was targeted because it is ‘‘the place of residence of trainers for the CIA.’’