Taliban targets Kabul airport with rockets

The Taliban on Thursday launched an attack on Kabul airport.

"A number of our mujahedeen armed with heavy and light weapons have launched an attack on Kabul International Airport," the insurgents' spokesman Zabiuhallah Mujahid said in a statement.

Witnesses reported explosions and gunfire ringing out near the airport, and the interior ministry said a group of insurgents had opened fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades after seizing a building under construction at the airport.

Afzal Aman, a general in the Afghan army in Kabul, said several rockets hit the airport but no planes had been damaged so far. He said two attackers had been killed by Afghan forces.

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Civilian flights from the international airport north of Kabul have been suspended, another Afghan official said.

The airport lies next to a sprawling military base run by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, whose troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan after more than a decade of war, as the country lies in the grip of a power struggle following disputed presidential elections.

ISAF and Afghan military helicopters were seen hovering over the area during Thursday's attack.

The attack also comes after a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives near a busy market and a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least 89 people in the deadliest insurgent attack on civilians since the 2001 US-led invasion.