The explosion caused
extensive damage to the building, a NATO spokesman said, but Germany indicated
on Friday this would not deter it from continuing its work as part of the
international mission
in Afghanistan.
in Afghanistan.
Triggered by a
suicide bomber, the blast shattered windows as far as 5 km (3 miles) away, NATO
said. A local doctor said it and the subsequent firefight also wounded 120
people.
Twenty consular
staff survived the attack with no injuries, German officials said.
Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier said soldiers had had to battle hard to repel the
heavily armed attackers.
"It was only
possible to ... beat them back after fighting that occurred at the compound and
in the building," he said, adding that Berlin would review its lead role
in northern Afghanistan.
His spokesman Martin
Schaefer later said he did not expect a big policy shift.
"I cannot
imagine that the events of last night will lead to a fundamental change in
Germany's thinking or that of the global community on the need for continued
assistance for Afghanistan," Schaefer told reporters.
The attack also
highlights one of the tougher policy challenges facing U.S. President-elect
Donald Trump when he takes office in January.
U.S. combat
operations against the Taliban largely ended in 2014, but thousands of its
soldiers remain in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led Resolute Support
mission.
.
The Taliban said the
attack was in retaliation for NATO air strikes against a village near the
northern city of Kunduz last week in which more than 30 people, many of them
children, were killed.
Heavily armed
fighters, including suicide bombers, had been sent "with a mission to
destroy the German consulate general and kill whoever they found there",
the Islamist militant movement's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said by
telephone.
Taliban forces came
close to over-running Kunduz last month, a year after briefly capturing it in
their biggest success in Afghanistan's 15-year-long war.
INTO THE EARLY HOURS
The NATO spokesman
said at least one vehicle packed with explosives was rammed into the high outer
wall surrounding the consulate, but authorities were investigating if a second
car had been involved.
"The extent of
damage to the city is huge," said Abdul Razaq Qaderi, deputy police chief
of Balkh province. "This kind of an attack, bringing a truck full of
explosives and blowing it up in the city, had never happened before.
Noor Mohammad Faiz,
the head doctor in Mazar-i-Sharif hospital, said four bodies and 120 wounded,
most hurt by flying glass, had been brought to the hospital.
Qaderi said German
troops later shot and killed two men on motorcycles who did not comply with
orders to stop, with a third man seriously injured. German Defence Minister
Ursula von der Leyen said that incident was being investigated.
It was not clear if
the men were attackers or civilians.
.
Germany, which heads
Resolute Support in northern Afghanistan, has about 800 soldiers at a base on
the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, with another 1,000 troops coming from 20
partner countries.
The explosion
occurred about an hour before midnight local time, a spokesman for the German
military joint forces command in Potsdam said.
"It was a
prepared attack for which we made all arrangements," the Taliban's Mujahid
said, adding that dozens of German soldiers and intelligence personnel were
killed in the attack.
The Taliban often
exaggerate casualties caused by its operations.
Sayed Kamal Sadat,
police chief of Balkh province, said the fighting was over by the early hours
of the morning after Afghan special forces, German security personnel and
NATO's quick reaction protection force intervened.
At least one suspect
was arrested from the area of explosion, officials said.
The heavily
protected consulate is in a large building close to the Blue Mosque in the
center of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the Indian consulate was also attacked by
militant gunmen earlier this year.
REUTERS
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