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Kabul: The plot to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the weekend was hatched in lawless tribal areas across the border in Pakistan, the Afghan intelligence chief said Wednesday.
The accusation came just hours after Afghan security forces raided a Kabul hide-out of militants with suspected links to the attack on Karzai. Seven people died in the raid.
Intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh said there was no evidence that the government or intelligence agencies in Islamabad were involved in the assassination attempt on Sunday.
"We have no evidence whether ... the operation has had any mercy or go-ahead from the government of Pakistan and (its) special agencies," Saleh told reporters in Kabul.
"There [is] very, very strong evidence suggesting that Pakistan's soil once again has been used to inflict pain on our nation." The militants involved in the weekend plot had apparently been in touch with people in the Bajaur and North Waziristan tribal areas and the main northwestern city of Peshawar over phone, he said.
In an initial reaction, Pakistan army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said the allegation that the attack on Karzai had its roots in Pakistan's tribal areas appeared "baseless".
"Anybody can say that militants (in the tribal areas) have done this or that," Abbas said. "How can one validate such claims?"
Afghanistan often accuses Pakistan of harbouring leaders of the Taliban insurgency against Karzai's government, although Pakistan denies it.
Earlier in the day, Afghan security forces fought a pre-dawn battle with militants holed up in a mud-brick house in western Kabul. Rocket-propelled grenades and automatic gunfire were directed at the desperados even as families evacuated the area.
Saleh said the government troops finally destroyed the two-story house with heavy weapons fire when it was clear the militants would not surrender.
Two militants, a woman and a child were among those killed, Saleh said. Three intelligence agents also died, he said.
One of the dead militants had supplied weapons used in the attack on Karzai, Saleh said. The raid was part of a wider operation in which six other militant suspects were detained in two other locations in the capital, he said.
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