Crazy, even Afghan parliamentarians picked up weapons to stop the Taliban attack on parliament.

(Guardian) — Kabul and several other key locations in Afghanistan were rocked by gunfire and explosions on Sunday as the Taliban-led insurgency launched its largest coordinated attack in its 11-year struggle.

The onslaught began at 2pm local time, with gun and rocket attacks on high profile buildings in Kabul, including the British embassy and several other foreign missions, parliament and Afghan government ministries. Simultaneous strikes were launched in the nearby provinces of Logar and Paktia, and on the airport in the eastern trading city of Jalalabad. Five hours later, as dusk fell in the capital, gun battles were still raging. A Taliban claim to have attacked President Hamid Karzai’s palace could not be immediately confirmed.

The attacks in Kabul resembled the audacious assault in September last year when gunmen stormed an abandoned, half-built tower from where they fired rockets on to the US Embassy, prompting a 20-hour siege by Afghan special forces.

Only this time the scale of the attack in the capital alone was even greater. At least seven sites across the heavily guarded city were attacked, raising worrying questions about the Taliban’s continued potency despite intense US efforts to degrade them on the battlefield.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said the attacks proved the movement’s strength. “The puppet government and its foreign backers claimed the Taliban would not be able to launch a spring offensive, but today’s attacks were the start of our spring offensive.”

In the south-west of the city gunmen managed to climb a five-storey building site from where they fired on the Afghan parliament, the Commerce Ministry and the Russian Embassy.

Some members of parliament, which is full of battle hardened former mujahideen commanders who fought a guerrilla campaign against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s, grabbed weapons and joined parliamentary guards to try to repel the attack.

Pamir Patang, chief of staff at the neighbouring Commerce Ministry, said one of the fortified guard positions at the corner of the large ministerial compound was destroyed by a rocket propelled grenade.

“There appears to be quite a number of attackers who are well positioned inside the building and they are targeting us from there,” he said. “They used to just target the Afghan security agencies but now they seem to be deliberately targeting the country’s economic institutions as well.”

He said various foreign advisers working for the British company Adam Smith International were still stuck inside the sprawling compound and would probably not leave until the area had been secured.