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| Afghanistan |
| Four Gunmen Killed in Attack on Luxury Kabul Hotel |
| 2014-03-21 |
| [An Nahar] Four suspected Taliban gunnies entered a luxury hotel in Kabul on Thursday evening before being rubbed out, officials said, adding that three people were maimed as guests were rushed to reinforced safe rooms. Just two weeks before Afghanistan's presidential elections, the attackers hid small pistols in their socks and penetrated several layers of security at the Serena hotel, a prestigious venue favored by foreign visitors to the Afghan capital. A front man for the Taliban grabbed credit for the attack. Talibs have vowed a campaign of violence to disrupt the Afghan election on April 5. "The four young attackers entered the hotel at about 6 pm pretending to be guests and started to attack at 9 pm," Sediq Sediqqi, the interior ministry front man, told news hounds. "Two guards have been taken to hospital, as well as one foreign national employee of the hotel. All four attackers were bumped off, two of them after they resisted in a bathroom in the hotel." No guests were reported to have been injured in the attack, during which intense bursts of gunfire erupted inside the hotel as security forces and emergency response teams rushed to the scene. "I heard some gunshots, and we all were taken by guards to the safe rooms," a front-desk clerk told Agence La Belle France Presse on condition of anonymity. The attack occurred on the eve of Nawroz, the Persian New Year which is a major holiday in Afghanistan, and the Serena hotel was hosting special evening celebrations. The Serena hotel, the most prestigious accommodation in the city, was hit by a Taliban suicide kaboom in 2008 that left eight people dead. The gunfire at the hotel on Thursday came on the same day that seven Taliban suicide attackers stormed a cop shoppe in the eastern city of Jalalabad killing 10 coppers. The target of the three-hour truck bomb and gun assault was a cop shoppe near the governor's house in Jalalabad. |
| Posted by:Fred |