CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux Tells Mediaite That The Taliban Is Undertaking ‘Bold, High-Profile Attacks’
CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux has been on the ground in Afghanistan for nearly a week on a military embed. Since her arrival in Kabul on September 8th, she has conducted a series of interviews with those most intimately involved in attempting to prepare Afghanistan for both its short- and long-term future, both reporting from the region on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and on the Base attack from the region that had occurred the day before.
Malveaux, then, has something of a unique perspective on the various attacks that unfolded today around 1:30 p.m. local time in Afghanistan. Taliban members had targeted several high-profile locations, including the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters, as well as an area near a local high school. So far, seven have been killed in the attacks and ensuing violence, including Afghan police officers and civilians, and seventeen have been reported injured. Current reports also indicate that three of the four attackers are dead.
“The last we heard,” Malveaux tells Mediaite, “Afghan police were going through the building. They’d killed three, with one left.” She also describes hearing explosions and gunfire and shares that, while passing a local military hospital, she spied an insurgent laying out, clearly lifeless.
A Taliban spokesperson, whom Malveaux tells us makes himself quite “easy to reach” when it comes to the press, has informed CNN that that the group has targeted the embassy, the International Security Assistance Force (a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan) and NATO in an effort to promote what Malveaux described as “bold, high-profile attacks.”
In speaking with U.S. General John Allen, Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the past few days, Malveaux has been able to obtain a more complete picture of our mission in Afghanistan, including whether the current timetable for pulling troops out of the region is realistic and whether Afghanistan is “better off” today than it was a decade ago. Her reports have included an in-depth look into ongoing efforts to train Afghan police, a revealing interview with President Karzai about working towards a peace agreement with the Taliban, reports on the Taliban hit on an Afghan coalition base over the weekend, and the challenges U.S. troops face in training Afghan recruits to take over.
As Malveaux explains in the CNN video report below, eyewitnesses say the four Taliban members launched their attack on the Embassy from an abandoned building nearby:
