  A wake up to gun fire
Reported by Seattle Times on Thursday, 29 October 2009 (on October 29, 2009)
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KABUL -- Sometimes, I wake up hear to the sounds of birds chirping in the garden. Sometimes I wake up unexpectedly to an editor's late-night phone call or to the sounds of a cat fight.
A few days back, I was jolted awake by the violent shaking of my room as an earthquake struck this land.
On Wednesday morning, I was roused before 6 a.m. to the sounds of combat. First, I heard a few machine-gun shots. Then for more than an hour, they waxed and waned sometimes reaching chilling, explosive crescendos. Sometimes gunfire seemed so close, I thought it must be right outside my guest house. Then it would seem more distant.
The way the shots echoed in the narrow, wall-lined streets here, it was difficult to tell what direction they were coming from. As I lay in bed, I imagined a gunbattle playing out through different parts of the neighborhood. It seemed imprudent to set outside to investigate.
It's been a difficult few days. On Monday, I had just returned from a full day of reporting north of Kabul to news that three helicopters had gone down resulting in 14 American deaths. I scrambled to write about the deaths in a dispatch to McClatchy News.
Then Tuesday night, after another full day of reporting, I got a late press release about eight American service members who had died in southern Afghanistan from roadside bombs. One soldier had died after his vehicle was hit, seven others from a bomb and insurgent attack on a second vehicle. Sources were saying that at least one of the two vehicles was a Stryker in the Arghandab, which would mean that the Fort Lewis-based brigade with which I was recently embedded with had suffered more losses.
There is a communications blackout that follows tragedy and prevents other soldiers from phoning or e-mailing as next of kin are notified. So I was in the dark, like other journalists, about the details of the attacks.
In the morning, in my room, I was once again in the dark. I listened to all the fire fight, knowing that something awful was quite likely playing out nearby -- but the who, what and why were unanswered questions.
Finally, the gunfire subsided, and I joined Hashim Shukoor, my Afghan colleague and other American journalists in a three-block walk to an intersection where an angry-looking young policeman motioned me to stay. He finally allowed Hashim to continue farther.
Hashim brought back the first incomplete details about insurgents storming a private guest house full of United Nations workers. There had been some sandbags out front, a few small blast walls, and five guards -- two of whom were shot along with five United Nations workers, three insurgents wearing suicide vests and one civilian who lived in a nearby house.
There was a huge fire. It wasn't quite clear how it started, but plumes of smoke were wafting into a crisp blue morning sky.
I interviewed the guest house manager, Wias Sherzai, who said all the rooms were singed by fire and that some of the people had been trapped on the top floor by flames and gunfire.
Sherzai had not seen the attackers, whom police said were wearing old police uniforms they may purchased in the marketplace. The attackers also had suicide vests. There are disputes about whether they had been able to detonate them or not.
The police said they arrived at the scene and killed the attackers before they could detonate the vests. One of the men lodged at the guest house told ABC News that one attacker did succeed in detonating a vest and killed a woman who was trying to escape from the flames.
There is no doubt the insurgents set off grenades, and this appeared to have touched off the huge fire somehow.
I still have unanswered questions. Some of the gunfire that I'd heard in my room seemed very close to where I was staying. Some seemed much farther away. So I wonder whether there were other clashes or if I was just listening to some trigger-happy folks taking pot shots far from the scene of the battle.
The Taliban claimed credit and said they were striking out against election workers. Some, but not all of the people at the guest house, were working on elections. All these U.N. workers were civilians, and here with the hope that their work could help make Afghanistan a better place.
In just the last post, I wrote about my run through Kabul with the Hash House Harriers, and how it felt good to get out from behind walled off compounds to course through the streets.
Given the ferocity of Wednesday's attack, it seems almost certain there will l be more blast walls, more sand bags, and more security guards. Already, the assault has triggered a big lockdown for international workers who live within compounds.
Later in the day, a big thunderstorm rolled into Kabul. In this high-altitude area, the thunder was loud and sharp. I jumped when I heard the biggest thunder clap but quickly realized that this time it was nature.
Links: Full news story
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