KABUL — NATO helicopters fired rockets at gunmen on the rooftop of a besieged hotel early today, ending a standoff of more than four hours between militants and police that left at least seven people dead and eight wounded, Afghan officials said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said six suicide bombers attacked Kabul’s Inter-Continental hotel, which is frequented by Afghan officials and foreign visitors. He said two were killed by hotel guards at the beginning of the attack and four others either blew themselves up or were killed in the airstrike or by Afghan security forces.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the rare, nighttime attack in the capital — an apparent attempt to show that it remains potent despite heavy pressure from coalition and Afghan security forces.
The attackers were heavily armed with machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and grenade launchers, officials said. Police rushed to the scene, and firefights broke out. They battled for hours with gunmen who were on the roof.
Some Afghan provincial officials were among the 60 to 70 guests staying at the hotel.
Abdul Zahir Faizada, head of the local council in Herat province in western Afghanistan, was staying at the hotel. He planned to attend a conference in Kabul today to discuss plans for Afghan security forces to take the lead for securing an increasing number of areas of the country by 2014, when international forces are expected to move out of combat roles. Afghans from across the country were in the city to attend.
“We were locked in a room. Everybody was shooting and firing,” said Faizada, who was staying at the hotel with the mayor of Herat city and other officials from the province. “I heard a lot of shooting.”
The deputy police chief in Kabul, Daoud Amin, said seven people died in the attack and eight other people — two policemen and six civilians — were wounded. The attackers are not counted in that death toll.
Nazar Ali Wahedi, chief of intelligence for Helmand province in the south, called the assailants “the enemy of stability and peace” in Afghanistan.
Wahedi was in town to attend today’s transition conference, which was being held at a government building in the capital.
The attack began around 10:30 p.m. local time Tuesday and ended around 3 a.m. today.
U.S. Army Maj. Jason Waggoner, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Afghanistan, said the helicopters fired on the roof where militants had taken up positions. He said they killed three gunmen and that Afghan security forces clearing the hotel worked their way up to the roof and engaged the remaining insurgents.
As the helicopters attacked and Afghan security forces moved in, four massive explosions rocked the hotel. Officials at the scene said the blasts occurred when security forces either fired on suicide bombers or they blew themselves up.
The attack occurred nearly a week after President Barack Obama announced he was withdrawing 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan and would end the American combat role by the end of 2014.
