Taliban fighters shattered a seven-month lull in attacks on Kabul with a tightly-choreographed series of raids on military bases, embassies and the parliament, to mark the start of their spring offensive.

The hours-long spree of machinegun and rocket fire unfolded across three areas of the Afghan capital and in the main cities of three eastern provinces, making it the most ambitious insurgent assault of its kind since the US invasion in 2001. The Taliban said it had been planning the operation for months to mark the start of its spring campaign and pledged more attacks.

The movement’s capacity to mount such a show of force at a time when US troops have already begun to withdraw will renew fears that Nato’s plan to hand over to Afghan forces in 2014 is dictated more by political calculations in western capitals than Afghanistan’s realities.