Rocket targets US embassy on 9/11 anniversary

Nation commemorates 2001 attacks as its aftermath extends and evolves

KABUL, Afghanistan/NEW YORK - A rocket exploded at the US embassy in Afghanistan just minutes into Wednesday, the anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on the United States, but officials at the compound declared all-clear about an hour later and reported no injuries.

A plume of smoke rose over central Kabul shortly after midnight and sirens could be heard. Inside the embassy, employees heard this message over the loudspeaker: "An explosion caused by a rocket has occurred on compound."

There was no immediate comment from Afghan officials. The NATO mission, which is nearby, also said no personnel had been injured.

It was the first major attack in the Afghan capital since US President Donald Trump abruptly called off US-Taliban talks over the weekend, on the brink of an apparent deal to end Washington's longest war.

Afghan national security forces discovered and defused 13 roadside bombs and landmines in four provinces on Wednesday, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

Taliban militants have been using improvised explosive devices to make roadside bombs and landmines for targeting security forces, but the lethal homemade weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.

Two Taliban car bombs shook Kabul last week, killing several civilians and two members of the NATO mission. Trump has cited the death of a US service member in one of those blasts as the reason why he now calls the US-Taliban talks "dead".

The annual 9/11 anniversary is a sensitive day in Afghanistan's capital and one on which attacks have occurred in the past. A US-led invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 attack toppled the Taliban, who had harbored Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and mastermind of the attacks by four planes.

In the nearly 18 years of fighting since then, the number of US troops in Afghanistan soared to 100,000 and dropped dramatically after bin Laden was killed in neighboring Pakistan in 2011.

Now about 14,000 US troops remain and Trump has called it "ridiculous" that they are still in Afghanistan after so long and so many billions of dollars spent.

It is not clear whether the US-Taliban talks will resume.

Nation still grapples

On Wednesday, US people were commemorating 9/11 with mournful ceremonies, volunteering, appeals to "never forget" and rising attention to the terror attacks' extended toll on responders.

A crowd of victims' relatives were expected at New York's ground zero, the site of the twin-towered World Trade Center that collapsed after being struck by two hijacked passenger jets. Trump was scheduled to join an observance at the Pentagon, the site of a third attack. Vice-President Mike Pence was to speak at the site where a fourth plane was downed, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Former US president George W. Bush, the commander-in-chief at the time of the 2001 attacks, was due at an afternoon wreath-laying at the Pentagon.

Eighteen years after the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil, the nation is still grappling with the aftermath at ground zero, in Congress and beyond. The attacks' aftermath is visible from airport security checkpoints to Afghanistan.

The anniversary ceremonies center on remembering the nearly 3,000 people killed when hijacked planes rammed into the trade center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville on Sept 11, 2001. All those victims' names are to be read aloud at the ground zero ceremony, where moments of silence and tolling bells mark the moments when the aircraft crashed and the trade center's twin towers fell.

Meanwhile, weary Afghans watch their own toll from the aftermath continue to rise.

Last week's Taliban car bomb targeted a foreign compound but instead shredded Afghan homes, with stunned and bloodied families picking up children and fleeing in darkness as their once-solid world collapsed. One family saw 30 relatives wounded - many of them women - including a son still healing from an attack the year before.

"Our only hope was peace," Hayat Khan, the family's 54-year-old patriarch, said on Tuesday, "and that doesn't happen now."

The idea that Trump in a series of tweets over the weekend would call off a deal on the brink of completion, citing the Taliban's killing of a US service member last week, has struck many Afghans as incomprehensible.

"There are attacks every day," said Khan's 26-year-old son, Zaki, who walked The Associated Press through his family's ruined home in Kabul. A relative held up a phone to show a photo of Zaki, dusty and bleeding and clutching a child, shortly after the blast. "Why doesn't he care about the killing of hundreds of civilians here?"

Agencies - Xinhua

(China Daily 09/12/2019 page11)