Two Spanish police officers and four of their Afghan colleagues were killed in an attack that began when a car bomb exploded during the rush hour in Kabul’s diplomatic quarter, near the Spanish embassy.

Afghan special forces hunted down and killed the four attackers in a gun battle that lasted several hours into the night.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The ruling from the Audiencia Nacional, dated July 4th, found the Spanish government “financially responsible for the damage caused by the attack”.

The Madrid court ordered the government to compensate each widow and child of those killed sums running between €128,000 ($140,000) to €229,000.

Following the attack Spanish ambassador Emilio Perez de Agreda and his deputy, were accused of ignoring several warnings about the lack of security at the embassy.

But a Spanish court in 2017 dismissed a complaint against them for “reckless homicide”, ruling that embassy security was not their responsibility but that of the Spanish state.

The “vulnerability of the site had been pointed out on several occasions in reports” since 2009, said a statement from the court, but the Spanish officials had failed to react.

It was not certain the attack could have been avoided if security had been better at the embassy, the court said.

But “if such measures had been in place, the few troops present would have been better able to defend the place”, it added.