Suspected Taliban militants shot dead two soldiers and injured seven others

Suspected Taliban militants shot dead two soldiers and injured seven others Monday in an audacious attack inside the Afghan defence ministry which the militia said was aimed at France's defence minister.
  
A suicide bomber wearing army uniform was killed inside the building before he could detonate, the ministry's spokesman said following the assault which struck at the heart of the embattled Kabul government.
  
French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet is currently on a visit to Afghanistan but was not in the building at the time, a French military spokesman said. Afghan army spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP: "A person in Afghan army uniform opened fire on his comrades, killed two soldiers, injured seven others, then was targeted himself and was brought down."
  
After his death the gunman was found to be wearing a suicide vest, he said. A military source speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that three militants had managed to enter the building, which faces President Hamid Karzai's office, and that all were killed.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told AFP that Longuet was the target.