— Shortly after security forces gunned down the last assailant involved in a brazen attack in Kabul Wednesday morning, officials said they believe the attackers were dressed as women to smuggle a huge stockpile of weapons into a building overlooking the U.S. Embassy and the NATO headquarters. 
 
 The last of six assailants who launched rockets and sprayed the heavily secured compound with rifles for hours was gunned down at 8:30 a.m., police spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said. The attack, which exposed the vulnerability of the Afghan capital as U.S. forces begin to withdraw, began at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and involved at least three suicide bombers who detonated explosives elsewhere in the city. 
 
 Sediqqi said authorities found burqas — the blue garments worn by many Afghan woman that drapes them from head to toe — inside the van the assailants used to transport weapons into the building. 
 
 “We strongly believe they used burqas to reach this place,” Sediqqi said, speaking outside the building as reporters took photos of the six bodies of the assailants. “The police respect the women too much.” 
 
 Sediqqi said the siege ended only after Afghan and NATO special forces stormed the building Wednesday morning as NATO attack helicopters provided backup. 
 
 NATO said six coalition “personnel” were wounded in the attack. A NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said three of the troops were wounded Tuesday in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on the base. The other three were wounded while clearing the building overnight, he added. 
 
 U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said Wednesday that the attack was likely carried out by the Haqanni network, a Taliban offshoot group that has been linked to some of the boldest attacks in the capital.The Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack Tuesday. 
 
 Crocker downplayed the significance of Tuesday’s attack, which kept the capital under seige for nearly 20 hours. 
 
 “These were five guys that rumbled into town with RPGs under their car seats,” Crocker said. “This is not a very big deal, a hard day for the embassy and my staff, who behaved with enormous courage and dedication. But look, you know a dozen RPG rounds from 800 meters away — that isn’t [the] Tet [offensive], that’s harassment.” 
 
 Crocker said between six and seven rounds landed inside the embassy compound. He said he was heartened by the Afghan government’s response to the attack and by what he described as a lately inconsequential attack. 
 
 “If this is the best they can do, I find their lack of ability and capacity and the ability of Afghan forces to respond to it, actually encouraging,” he said. 
 
 Transition of responsibility for security from NATO to Afghan security forces “will proceed on pace,” he added. 
 
 Crocker spoke to a Wall Street Journal reporter Tuesday morning who was asked by the embassy to share a transcript of the interview with the rest of the Kabul press corps. 
 
 Residents watched in horror as lightly armed police officers wearing no body armor fought assailants who fired rockets into diplomatic and military enclaves while holed up in an unoccupied building in what is perhaps the most secure part of the capital. 
 
 The NATO headquarters and the embassy went on high alert after the initial blasts rang out Tuesday afternoon, with diplomats barricading themselves in bunkers. American attack helicopters had joined the fight, diving down to strike at the assailants. 
 
 Kabul has seen its share of high-profile, chilling attacks this year, including recent strikes on the Intercontinental Hotel and the British Council. But the attack Tuesday was rich in symbolism in an impoverished country, scarred by years of war, where the United States has spent billions of dollars over the past decade in an elusive attempt to bring stability. 
 
 To gain access to the unoccupied 15-story building that overlooks the sprawling diplomatic and military compounds, the assailants drove into the basement, then climbed to one of the top floors and took up positions behind cement pillars, Afghan authorities said. The building is under construction. 
 
 The prolonged fighting around NATO’s nerve center in Kabul, the headquarters for top U.S. commanders, exposed serious shortcomings in security and intelligence. Early reports suggested that at least seven Afghans were killed in the attack. 
 
 A Taliban spokesman said the attack was intended to remind Afghanistan’s government and the United States about the power the insurgents still wield. “We have not run out of patience, and we want to fight to end their occupation,” said the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid. “We have the ability to strike when we want.” 
 
 The Afghan government took formal control of security in a number of districts around Kabul this summer as part of a plan to gradually transfer responsibility from foreign to Afghan forces over the next three years. The first phase is seen as a key test of the competence of the U.S.-funded-and-trained Afghan forces, which the Obama administration hopes will be able to secure Afghanistan with little foreign help by the end of 2014. Kabul has effectively been under Afghan security control for several years. 
 
 Afghan President Hamid Kar­zai condemned the attack and vowed that it would “embolden people’s determination in taking the responsibility for their country’s own affairs.” To many Afghans, such condemnations have begun to ring hollow as the Afghanistan war nears its 10th year, with levels of violence rising and the prospect of a negotiated settlement appearing increasingly distant. 
 
 “The government is too weak to protect us,” said Ismail Agha, 38, who lives near the tall building from which the assailants launched the attack. “They should let us go after the terrorists and fight them ourselves.” 
 
 The attack Tuesday jolted expatriates, who have grown accustomed to sporadic violence in Kabul. 
 
 Hamid M. Khan, a rule-of-law adviser in the Kabul office of the U.S. Institute of Peace, said he and his colleagues spent hours huddled in a safe room at their compound as blasts and gunshots thundered nearby at the site of the main attack. 
 
 “The entire staff is hunkered down,” he said, using BlackBerry Messenger to communicate. “We’re very tense and alarmed by how close the rocket attacks and gunshots keep coming.” 
 
 At the World Bank office, a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy, more than 35 staffers were holed up in a basement bunker that had no bathroom or provisions. 
 
 Elsewhere, as the clashes unfolded, Noorullah Mehirjoy, 60, a government worker, spent hours trying to find his young daughter, Zorah. 
 
 She had been at a graduation ceremony, where Karzai was supposed to have awarded diplomas. But a security adviser approached the president soon after the first explosions were heard and whispered in his ear, Mehirjoy said. 
 
 “Karzai left the hall without saying goodbye,” he said. 
 
 In an interview last week, the new U.S. ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, said he was pleasantly surprised by the situation in Kabul, having last been there in 2002. 
 
 “The biggest problem in Kabul is traffic,” said Crocker, who has noted that Afghanistan’s problems are serious and will take a long time to solve. 
 
 Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report. ||||| KABUL Suicide bombers attacked a compound housing Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday hours after U.S. President Barack Obama signed a security pact during a short visit to a city that remains vulnerable to a resilient insurgency. 
 
 The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which involved a car bomb and insurgents disguised as women on the eastern outskirts of the capital, killing seven people, a Gurkha guard and six passers-by, and wounding 17. 
 
 The Taliban said it was in response to Obama's visit and to the strategic partnership deal he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a pact that sets out a long-term U.S. role after most foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014. 
 
 The insurgency also claimed their spring offensive, which began two weeks ago with attacks in Kabul, would be renewed on Thursday, despite a security clamp-down in the capital. 
 
 Obama's visit came a year after U.S. special forces troops killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the architect of the September 11, 2001, attacks, in a raid in neighboring Pakistan. 
 
 In a televised address to the American people from a base north of Kabul, he said the war in Afghanistan was winding down. 
 
 "As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it's time to renew America," Obama said, speaking against a backdrop of armored vehicles and a U.S. flag. 
 
 "This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end. 
 
 Nearly 3,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban rulers were ousted in 2001. 
 
 The Taliban, overthrown by U.S.-backed Afghan forces for harboring bin Laden and other militants, were quick to take credit for Wednesday's attack at Green Village, one of several compounds for Westerners on a main road out of the capital. 
 
 "This attack was to make clear our reaction to Obama's trip to Afghanistan. The message was that instead of signing a strategic partnership deal with Afghanistan, he should think about taking his troops out from Afghanistan and leave it to Afghans to rebuild their country," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. 
 
 But America's Kabul ambassador, Ryan Crocker, said involvement of the Haqqani network - which Washington believes is based in Pakistan's North Waziristan region and which it blames for high-profile attacks in Kabul in April - could not be ruled out. 
 
 On the anniversary of bin Laden's killing, Crocker said he did not believe there would be a sole turning point in the war. 
 
 "Al Qaeda is still there. We do feel we are prevailing in this with our Afghan partners," he said. "We cannot be in a position of taking on ourselves bringing perfection to Afghanistan. That has to be left to Afghans." 
 
 But Crocker said there would be no repeat of the 1990s when a withdrawal of Western backers in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal unleashed a vicious civil war out of which the Taliban and al Qaeda support bases arose. 
 
 BLOOD STAINS 
 
 Hundreds of police and intelligence agency troops surrounded the area around Green Village after the attack. Ruined cars were seen in front of the compound gates but officials said no attackers made it inside the heavily-guarded complex. 
 
 "I was going to the office when the car in front of me blew up. I got on my bicycle and fled," 40-year-old Farid Ahmad Mohammad told Reuters near the scene of the explosion. 
 
 A worker at the compound, Jamrod, said at a hospital where the wounded had been taken that he had been showing his identity card at the compound's main gate when the vehicle exploded. 
 
 "I heard a bang and then I slammed into the wall," Jamrod, still clad in blood-stained jeans, told Reuters. 
 
 Wednesday's attack was the latest in a recent surge of violence after the Taliban announced they had begun their usual "spring offensive", and since they suspended tentative steps towards peace talks with the United States. 
 
 Such incidents raise troubling questions about the readiness of Afghan forces to take over when militants remain able to stage high-profile attacks, even when already tight security had been beefed up even further for Obama's visit. 
 
 Insurgents staged coordinated attacks in Kabul last month, paralyzing the city's centre and diplomatic area for 18 hours. 
 
 The Taliban also claimed responsibility for those attacks, but U.S. and Afghan officials blamed the militant, al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network. 
 
 ELECTION YEAR 
 
 Obama's visit was clearly an election-year event. 
 
 He spoke to U.S. troops during a stay in Afghanistan of roughly six hours and emphasized bin Laden's demise, an event his re-election campaign has touted as one of his most important achievements in office. 
 
 "Not only were we able to drive al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but slowly and systematically we have been able to decimate the ranks of al Qaeda, and a year ago we were able to finally bring Osama bin Laden to justice," Obama said to cheers. 
 
 But even as he asserted in his speech that there was a "clear path" to fulfilling the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and made his strongest claim yet that the defeat of al Qaeda was "within reach", he warned of further hardship ahead. 
 
 "I recognize that many Americans are tired of war ... But we must finish the job we started in Afghanistan and end this war responsibly," he said at Bagram airbase, where only months ago thousands of Afghans rioted after U.S. troops accidentally burned copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. 
 
 That incident, and the killing of 17 Afghan civilians by a rogue U.S. soldier weeks later, plunged already tense relations to their lowest point in years. 
 
 While speaking in broad terms of "difficult days ahead", Obama did not address some of the thorniest challenges. 
 
 These include corruption in Karzai's government, the unsteadiness of Afghan forces in the face of a resilient Taliban insurgency, and Washington's strained ties with Pakistan, where U.S. officials see selective cooperation in cracking down on militants fuelling cross-border violence. 
 
 Earlier, Obama met Karzai at his walled garden palace in Kabul, where they signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement. "By signing this document, we close the last 10 years and open a new season of equal relations," Karzai said after the meeting. 
 
 The agreement does not specify whether a reduced number of U.S. troops, possibly special forces, and advisers will remain after NATO's 2014 withdrawal deadline. That will be dealt with in a separate status-of-forces agreement still being worked out. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Rob Taylor, Hamid Shalizi and Caren Bohan; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Rob Taylor; Editing by Nick Macfie)
– This morning—almost 21 hours after the attack on the US embassy and other buildings in Kabul began—the last of the six attackers have been killed and the area is locked down. But questions are being raised about why it took so long to secure the high-rise building used by the assailants as a staging area, the Los Angeles Times notes. At least seven Afghans died in the attack, and 17 were hurt. Officials believe the insurgents disguised themselves as women in order to get weapons into the building, which is under construction, the Washington Post adds. "We strongly believe they used burkas," which were found inside the van alongside the assailants' weapons, "to reach this place," a police spokesperson says. "The police respect the women too much." Though the attack raises concerns about Kabul's vulnerability and security shortcomings as US forces start withdrawing from Afghanistan, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker downplayed it, calling it simply "harassment." He continues, "If this is the best they can do, I find their lack of ability and capacity and the ability of Afghan forces to respond to it, actually encouraging." Crocker tells the New York Times today that the Pakistan-based Haqqani group appeared to be behind the assault.