An injured Afghan army soldier is taken to hospital in Farah after a suicide squad stormed a provincial courthouse and then battled security forces for hours. Photograph: Anonymous/AP
Nine suicide attackers disguised as Afghan army soldiers stormed a provincial courthouse and then battled security forces for hours, killing 44 people and injuring over 100 more on the deadliest day for Afghan civilians in more than a year.
The assault on Wednesday in remote western Farah province, on the border with Iran, came the day the country's powerful spy chief returned home from months of medical treatment in the US to recover from a December assassination attempt that nearly claimed his life.
The suicide squad drove into the capital of Farah in an army pickup and detonated a car bomb at the entrance to the complex before rushing inside, provincial police chief Agha Noor Kimtuz told the Guardian by phone. One group took over the court and another barricaded themselves inside the office of the attorney general for an hours-long battle with the police and army.
Bodies of the dead lay in the bloodied courtyard of the complex, and a member of parliament for the province said the attackers had also herded hostages into the basement of the complex and mowed them down with assault rifles.
"When they were trying to enter they shot and killed a policeman. After that anyone that was in their way they just opened fire and killed – civilians, prosecutors, judges," said Kabul-based MP Ustad Humayra Ayoubi, who spoke to constituents in Farah by phone.
"Some of the civilian employers of both buildings were taken into the basement and shot. The majority of them were killed and some of them were wounded."
There were 10 police officers and soldiers among the dead but all the rest were civilians, said Abdul Rahman Zhwandi, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Some of them were judges, he added, but authorities were still reeling from the scale of the attack and did not have a full list of victims.
Security has been weak for years in the border province, which in 2009 was also the site of one of Nato's worst civilian casualty incidents of the war. An air strike hit village homes killing dozens of women and children, although the toll is still disputed.
Last May an insurgent assault on the Farah governor's compound used similar tactics to those deployed on Wednesday; suicide bombers in police uniform killed seven people, although the governor escaped unscathed.
The Taliban claimed the latest attack, saying it was designed to free 10 fighters who were on trial in the building, Reuters reported. Afghan officials said 15 prisoners who had been brought in for sentencing were among the dead and wounded, but it was not clear if they were part of the same group or if any Taliban prisoners were actually in the court.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in a strongly-worded statement denounced the attack as a "genocide" that would not go unanswered, but did not condemn the Taliban by name.
The president, who has described the insurgent group as wayward brothers in the past, and is seeking to broker peace talks, instead said attacks on civilian targets "serve foreign evil objectives". He promised help for families of the victims and an investigation into the killings.
The Taliban are already responsible for the majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, according to UN data, but the direct assault on a court building sets a worrying precedent for a movement whose leadership has ordered its fighters to avoid civilian casualties.
"A great concern is that the attack appeared to be against civilian government employees, targeting judges and prosecutors, which we have not previously seen," said Georgette Gagnon, director of human rights for the UN mission in Afghanistan. The attack was among the worst in recent years, she added.
If the toll is confirmed, it would be the deadliest single attack on Afghan civilians since a bomber targeted Ashura ceremonies in Kabul at the end of 2011, killing over 50.
As the attack unfolded in western Afghanistan, Karzai was welcoming intelligence chief Asadullah Khalid back to the job after months in a US hospital, where visitors included US president Barack Obama. He had been badly wounded by a suicide bomber who concealed his explosives by wrapping them around his genitals.