At least four people were killed and a dozen injured when gunmen stormed a crowded government building in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday following a suicide bombing, with desperate survivors leaping from windows to escape the fighting, witnesses and officials said. Security forces rushed to the scene after armed men attacked the office in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, in the latest violence to hit the war-torn country as it gears up for a presidential election on September 28.
Terrified children at a nearby school climbed over walls to get further away from the fighting. A provincial spokesman, Ataullah Khogyani, said a suicide bomber had initially detonated explosives, after which the gunmen attacked.
Security forces fought to clear the building for several hours before declaring all three gunmen dead, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said roughly six hours after the attack began. Witnesses and an AFP reporter could hear gunshots immediately after the initial blast. One of the centre's employees, Haji Qudrat, described the moment one of the gunmen entered his office.
"After the explosion, we heard small gunfire in our corridor, then a man entered our office with a gun and started shooting," he told AFP from a hospital in Jalalabad, where he was receiving treatment for a wounded leg.
"I jumped out the window. Some of our friends are either killed or wounded."
Qudrat said there had been around 200 people inside the centre when the bomber detonated - 80 employees, and the rest people waiting to receive their national electronic identity cards, or "tazkiras".
"I was in class when I heard a big explosion followed by intense gunfire," said Mohammad Ullah, a teacher at a nearby school.
"The kids started crying so we had to vacate the school. We jumped over the walls to take the students to a safer place," he told AFP. No group has claimed the attack. Both the Taliban and the Islamic State group are active in Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan.
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