Karzai was warned of assassination plot
Meanwhile, a suicide attack killed 16 people, including 12 police, in an eastern province, a NATO spokesman said. Forty-one people were wounded.
Amrullah Saleh told parliament the plot to kill Karzai was hatched last month and the gunmen had rented the hotel room they opened fire from 45 days before the attack.
Karzai and other dignitaries escaped unharmed from Sunday’s assault during a ceremony in Kabul marking Afghanistan’s victory over the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s. Three other people, including a lawmaker, died.
Three of the attackers were also killed in a gun battle with security forces after the assault, Karzai’s government said, but the Taliban said three other insurgents got away.
“We had technical information... that this work would happen,” Saleh told a National Assembly session broadcast live on national television.
“We passed this information to the national security (adviser) and to the president of Afghanistan.”
Despite stringent measures by security services to protect the event, “the result is that we failed”, Saleh said.
An Afghan intelligence official has said about 100 people were rounded up for questioning after the attack. Some of those have since been freed, officials say.
“Tragically, the attackers succeeded in getting close enough to fire some shots,” said a statement issued by William Wood, the US ambassador.
It took authorities two minutes to defeat the attack, he said. Saleh, Defence Minister Abdur Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel were summoned to explain to lawmakers what happened on Sunday.
All three lost no-confidence votes against them by lawmakers yesterday, but not by a high enough margin to press for their ousting.
Militants launched more than 140 suicide attacks last year.
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