Tajbeg Palace assault — 1979 Soviet assassination of Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin
Soviet special forces killed Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, directly triggering the Soviet–Afghan War that lasted nearly a decade.
Key Facts
- Date of Operation
- 27 December 1979
- Palace guards killed
- 30 Afghan palace guards killed
- Army guards killed
- Over 300 army guards killed
- Afghan soldiers captured
- 1,700 total taken prisoner after surrender
- Amin's sons killed
- Two sons, aged 11 and 9, died from shrapnel
- Successor installed
- Babrak Karmal (Parcham faction leader)
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
The Soviet leadership, suspicious that Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin harbored secret contacts with the American embassy and might realign Afghanistan toward the United States, decided to remove him. They coordinated with the PDPA's Parcham faction, which opposed Amin's hardline Khalqist ideology, and moved troops across the Amu Darya and into Afghan airbases in preparation.
On 27 December 1979, Soviet special forces and airborne troops stormed the heavily fortified Tajbeg Palace in Kabul, killing Hafizullah Amin along with palace and army guards. Simultaneously, other government buildings — including the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the General Staff at Darul Aman Palace — were seized, dismantling Amin's Khalqist government in a single coordinated assault.
Babrak Karmal, leader of the Parcham faction, was installed as Amin's successor, giving the Soviets a cooperative Afghan government. However, the operation marked the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War, a protracted conflict lasting nearly a decade that drew widespread international condemnation and ultimately ended in Soviet withdrawal.