At
least 11 soldiers have been killed and 16 others wounded in a pre-dawn
attack on a military compound in Kabul, days after more than 100 people were killed in a suicide attack in the Afghan capital, a defence ministry official has told Al Jazeera.
Dawlat Waziri, the spokesman for the ministry of defence, said on Monday that the fighting at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University was over after the attackers, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, were subdued.
"There were five attackers, two of them
detonated their suicide vests, two others were gunned down by security
forces and one was arrested alive," Waziri said.
The attack on Monday was claimed by the Islamic State
of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) via the group's Amaq
website.
Monday's attack comes as Kabul residents are grieving over the suicide bombing on Saturday in the city centre, which killed at least 103 people and left 191 people wounded.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for Saturday's assault, saying its target was government officials.
Since the end of the last month, more than 200 people have
been killed and hundreds wounded in a wave of attacks unleashed by the
Taliban and rival ISIL.
At least 40 people were killed after Taliban fighters attacked Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul on January 21, while four days later another attack on Save the Children office in Jalalabad left at least six people dead.
Abdullah Fahimi, lecturer at Abu Rayhan University in Kabul,
told Al Jazeera that the city has seen a sharp increase of attacks by
armed groups in the past two winters.
"This comes in response to the aggressive strategy followed
by the Afghan government as well as the US government, which slapped
sanctions on six members of Taliban and the Haqqani Network," Fahimi
said.