DEVELOPING: Explosions and gunfire rang out at American University of Afghanistan in Kabul Wednesday in what a police commander described as "a complex attack."
Photo attributed to the attack on American University of Afghanistan in Kabul pic.twitter.com/EVunzOpyd3
— KAZEMI, Mustafa (@CombatJourno) August 24, 2016
Reporters in the area said teachers and hundreds of students took cover in classrooms and safe rooms as police and special forces surrounded the campus on the western outskirts of Afghanistan's capital city. A car bomb had exploded outside a school for the blind next door before at least one attacker fired at the university campus from that school building, a police officer at the scene told The New York Times.
#AFG A police CDR Kabul's rapid reaction force "We're dealing with a complex attack inside the American university.Special forces en route".
— Bilal Sarwary (@bsarwary) August 24, 2016
Associated Press photographer Massoud Hossaini said he was in a classroom with 15 students when he heard an explosion on the southern flank of the campus. "I went to the window to see what was going on, and I saw a person in normal clothes outside. He shot at me and shattered the glass," Hossaini said, adding that he fell on the glass and cut his hands. He also tweeted: "Help we are stuck inside AUAF and shooting flollowed by Explo this maybe my last tweets"
The students then barricaded themselves into the classroom, pushing chairs and desks against the door, and staying on the floor. Hossaini and about nine students managed to escape from the campus through a northern emergency gate. "As we were running I saw someone lying on the ground face down, they looked like they had been shot in the back," he said.
Witnesses and a U.S.-based school administrator told Fox News the gunfire had stopped but security teams were still sweeping the area. The numbers of people dead or injured were unclear, but ambulances raced victims to a nearby hospital. Local media reported fires continuted to burn on campus.
Police spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said investigators believed there was just one attacker. The university's president, Mark English, tells The Associated Press, "we are trying to assess the situation."
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Afghan security forces rushing to respond to the attack. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The Taliban were in the middle of their summer offensive against Afghan government forces.
One student told AFP over the phone, "We are stuck inside and very afraid." Hossaini and students with him took refuge in a house near the campus.
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A wounded person treated in an ambulance. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
The university was established a decade ago, and claims an estimated 1,700 students are enrolled there.
Two of its professors were kidnapped at gunpoint in Kabul on August 7. The professors were identified as Kevin King, an American, and Timothy Weeks from Australia. Men in military uniforms reportedly abducted them as they traveled between the campus and their home in Kabul. The professors' whereabouts are unclear.
Fox News' Rich Edson, Conor Powell, Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.