KABUL — A Taliban suicide bomber killed at least four foreign security guards on Tuesday, steering an explosives-laden motorcycle into an Afghan police compound and passing through multiple checkpoints before reaching an area occupied by trainers from DynCorp International, a US military contractor.
Three of the victims were from Nepal and one was from Peru, and all four were guarding the entrance to buildings used by DynCorp within a fortified compound run by the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan when the attacker set off his explosives, said Sayed Mahdi Kazemi, a spokesman for the counternarcotics force.
Seven other people were wounded, he said, including an Afghan prosecutor.
Kazemi said that the Afghan police manned multiple checkpoints between the DynCorp offices, where police trainers work, and the main entrance to the counternarcotics police compound, which also houses the offices of Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister for counternarcotics.
Though he declined to discuss how the bomber had made it past the police, Hashmatullah Stanikzai, a spokesman for the police in Kabul, said the attacker went undetected because he was wearing the same uniform as the foreign guards.
An official from the NATO-led military coalition said there were suspicions that the attacker had inside help. An Afghan in a uniform worn by foreign guards would “strike me as more suspicious, not less, right?” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing his Afghan counterparts.
The compound is close to Kabul’s airport .