New Delhi/Kabul, Feb. 26: A four-hour-long terrorist strike in central Kabul which began at 6.35 on Friday morning, in which an indeterminate number of Indians and possibly six others, including an Italian diplomat, a French filmmaker and local policemen, were killed, began with the attackers blasting through the entrance of the Safi Landmark Hotel, a leading establishment, and climbing to the sixth and seventh floors looking for Indian residents, Afghan sources pointed out to this newspaper.Late at night the Indian embassy in Kabul confirmed six fatalities. (The Afghan interior ministry had earlier indicated that nine Indians might be among the dead.) These are Maj. (Dr) Laishram Jyotin Singh of the Army Medical Corps, attached to Kabul’s famous Indira Gandhi Hospital; Maj. Deepak Yadav of the Army Education Corps, who had been despatched to teach English at the local military academy; Roshan Lal, an ITBP jawan posted at the Indian consulate in Herat who was on leave, on his way back home; Nitin Chibber, a secretary at the Indian consulate in Kandahar; engineer Bhola Ram, a project director of the Powergrid Corporation; and Nawab Khan, a tabla player visiting Kabul as part of a three-member troupe sent by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.The process of determining the identities of the dead and the injured is said to be continuing.A Boeing 737 of the Indian Air Force communication squadron is being flown to Kabul on Saturday morning to bring back the deceased and the dozen or so Indians thought to be injured in the terrorist strike. There are several Indian Army officers among the injured as well, sources said.Sources in the Afghan capital said details of the terrorist attack remained sketchy through the day, with the authorities keeping a tight control on news.Rooms at the Park Regency and Noor, two guest houses adjacent to the Safi Landmark, which is part of the Kabul City Centre, a large modern shopping complex, had been taken up by the Indian government to house some of its personnel and visitors. The Army officers were at the Noor. After the coordinated attacks at the hotel and the two guest houses, external affairs minister S.M. Krishna said in a statement in New Delhi that this was the “third attack on Indian officials and interests in Afghanistan in the past 20 months”.This is the nearest India has come to officially acknowledging on Friday that Indians were especially targeted in the dawn attack for which the Taliban has claimed responsibility.In the earlier two attacks — both on the Indian embassy in Kabul, in July 2008 and October 2009 — Afghan and Indian officials, relying partly on American sources, pointed a finger at Pakistan without losing much time. On Friday, however, the Indians and the Afghans appeared to be observing restraint.When the Afghan foreign minister Zalmay Rassoul telephoned Mr Krishna to commiserate on Friday evening, the Indian release quoted Mr Rassoul as saying that “India and Afghanistan were facing a common enemy”. Strongly condemning the attack, Mr Krishna responded that India firmly stood by Afghanistan “in confronting their common enemy”.The reference to Pakistan is clear enough, but it is general in nature and does not link Islamabad, or more specifically the Inter-Services Intelligence, which has been blamed in the past, to the Friday attacks. Possibly this is because the sites targeted were a hotel and guest houses not exclusively occupied by Indians, although the two guest houses had predominantly Indian guests.With security becoming tighter at the Indian embassy in Kabul, terrorists appear to be scouting for softer targets to get at Indians whose presence in Afghanistan is viewed with irritation by Pakistan. On December 15 last year, there was an attack just outside the Heetal Hotel in the posh Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul. Indian engineers were living at a guest house close to the hotel but happened to be away at the time of the strike, highly-placed Indian sources said afterward.Prime Minsiter Manmohan Singh, President Hamid Karzai, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned the dawn attack in strong terms.In his statement, the external affairs minister said the Kabul attack “was the handiwork of those who are desperate to undermine the friendship between India and Afghanistan, and do not wish to see a strong, democratic and pluralistic Afghanistan”.“The scourge of terrorism must be resolutely opposed, resisted and overcome through undiluted commitment and effort by the international community”, Mr Krishna added.In Kabul, Taliban attacks are often timed to hurt office-goers at around 8 in the morning. The attack on Friday, at dawn, and at locations that house Indians in large numbers, is seen as a significant pointer by many in Kabul, Afghan sources observed.

Anand K. Sahay         With agency inputs