At least three gunmen launched a brazen attack on the main luxury hotel in Kabul, leaving a hotel guard and one of the rebels dead, the NATO force in Afghanistan said Monday. The hardline Taliban movement said its men, including a suicide bomber, carried out the attack on the Kabul Serena, a five-star hotel frequented by foreigners. Norwegian media reporting from Kabul said Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere was in the hotel at the time of the attack but was safe and sheltering in the basement. "Three people attacked the hotel. They were apparently on foot," said a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Captain Mario Renna. "One has been killed by guards of the hotel but two others managed to get inside and they managed to kill one guard and wound two others, one of them seriously."
He did not say what had caused the blast or who may have carried out the attack. He also had no details on the fate of the other two attackers.
| "I can say no more!" |
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the insurgent group was responsible. "Four members of the Taliban, one of them wearing a suicide vest and all armed with Kalashnikovs, entered the Serena hotel and opened fire on foreigners," Mujahed told AFP. "One of them
The Afghan interior ministry confirmed there had been an explosion. "We don't know what it was at this stage," spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
Hotel management contacted by AFP would not immediately comment.
The main road running outside the five-star establishment, which is opposite the presidential palace, was sealed off and police and international military vehicles arrived at the scene, an AFP reporter said. Two ambulances were allowed through the hotel gate but
The Serena, opened in November 2005, is the main venue for top-level functions of the government, foreign embassies and businesses in the capital. It is heavily barricaded and reinforced because of the security threats, with a Taliban-led insurgency at its peak.
"Quagmire!"