AFP - Three people were killed Saturday, including two policemen, and 26 others wounded in an attack claimed by the Taliban from the police headquarters in Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan, said the spokesman provincial governor.
Nine children were among the wounded, "said Zalman Ayubi.
The police headquarters of the provincial capital is under attack since mid-day by insurgents holed up in a large six-storey building, located 50 m across, where they shoot with automatic weapons, rocket launchers and machine guns, said a correspondent for AFP.
Taliban insurgents have claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that six of their militants had taken control of the hotel.
The police, who replies with automatic weapons and rocket launchers, stormed the building early in the afternoon.
The correspondent of AFP, two explosions, one in the lobby, another powerful front of the building were heading directly when police began investing the hotel.
A police chief, who requested anonymity, told AFP that six explosions had been recorded since the fighting started, "five of them around the police headquarters, and about one km zone "near a shopping center, he added.
The AFP correspondent has heard from a seventh blast near police headquarters.
The fighting is still ongoing, have gained in intensity, found the AFP correspondent who saw the police take position on the roof of the hotel.
Of automatic weapons fire echoed also in several districts of Kandahar, deserted by its inhabitants, ordered by police not to leave their homes, according to this correspondent.
The streets are blocked by Afghan police and U.S. soldiers, while U.S. helicopter gunships turn in the sky.
Since they were toppled by an international coalition led by the United States in late 2001, the Taliban waging a deadly insurgency in Afghanistan against the Kabul government and the international force of 140,000 strong men, who supports it.
Violence has intensified in recent months in Kandahar province, recently hit by several deadly suicide bombings claimed by the Taliban, while NATO troops are conducting several months of offensives aimed at driving the rebels from their strongholds.
