Government rectified and admits that the Taliban attack was against Spain

USPA NEWS - The Spanish Minister of Interior, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, admitted on Saturday night that the Taliban attack in Kabul Friday, in which at least twelve people, including two Spanish policemen, were killed, was directed against Spain. And rectified the official Government version.

At first after the bombings, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, said the aim of the Taliban attack was not against the Embassy of Spain in Kabul. Twenty-four hours later, however, the Spanish Minister of Interior, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, was forced to rectify and admit that, by all indications, the Spanish embassy itself was the target of the attack. A conclusion that the Afghan press and the international media, which stressed that the modus operandi of terrorists was identical to that used in other attacks on foreign troops and diplomats in Afghanistan had already arrived: first the explosion of a car bomb and then a shootout with automatic weapons.

According to the Spanish Government, the motive for the attack could be the support that Spain provided to the democratization of Afghanistan. In this Asian country remain 21 Spanish soldiers and police in protection of the Embassy of Spain in Kabul as part of NATO personnel at the headquarters of the Alliance in Afghanistan and as trainers of Afghan security forces. But the Spanish contingent deployed in Afghanistan for the past thirteen years, which mobilized during that period to a total of 30,000 effective, had definitely retired last October.

Saturday afternoon met in Madrid Pact Anti-Jihad, which groups nine Spanish political parties including the populist Podemos (We can), who attended as an observer. After the meeting, the Minister of Interior, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, sent two messages: to the Spaniards told them that the drive against terrorism is above partisan and electoral interests of different parties, and terrorists sent them warning that they will be defeated.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Ministry of Foreing Affairs is speeding up procedures to repatriate the bodies of the two policemen killed in Taliban attack in Kabul. On Saturday more details of the circumstances under which they met were killed. The Spanish embassy in the Afghan capital has three buildings. In the nearest to where the car bomb exploded had its housing one of the agents, who died as a result of the explosion. The other policeman died while being taken to hospital by another agent, also injured after being hit by the blast of the bomb.

The explosion tore a hole in the wall through which the terrorists came into the Embassy of Spain. There, an intense gun battle between the attackers and Spanish security forces, which then Afghan police and military began joined. The fighting lasted twelve hours and ended with the death of four terrorists, one of them as a result of the explosion, two civil people and four Afghan policemen. In total, twelve dead; but the number may increase in the coming hours, depending on the evolution of wounded.