Tuesday, June 28, 2011

NATO TROOPS HELP KILL TALIBAN ATTACKERS AT KABUL INTERCON

Taliban bombers attacked the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul late Tuesday night, and many civilian casualties – mostly foreigners – were reported by Afghan police. The authorities said several people in the hotel had been killed—perhaps as many as a dozen—but could not offer verifiable figures. Several policemen were also reported hurt.

There were six insurgents in all, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, according to The Associated Press. In addition to three killed on the roof, two others were killed by hotel guards at the beginning of the assault and another was killed either in the attack by the NATO helicopters or by Afghan security forces, The AP reported.


At least seven other people were killed in the attack and eight were wounded, said the Kabul deputy police chief, Daoud Amin, according to The A.P. The assault ended about 3 a.m.
The heavily guarded Intercontinental Hotel, which sits on a hill on the western side of Kabul, has police guards at its base and intelligence officers stationed at the top of the hill and near the entrance. It was not clear how so many attackers could have breached the building’s defenses, The AP said.

A NATO spokesman said that the international forces tracked the situation through the night but left the fighting to the Afghans until early Wednesday when the International Security Assistance Force was called in.

“Two ISAF helicopters circled the roof of the hotel and then identified three individuals believed to be insurgents on the roof, and the helicopters engaged the individuals with small arms,” said Maj. Tim James, a NATO spokesman. “They were all wearing suicide vests and were armed and there were at least two explosions which we believe were the suicide vests detonating.

“Then Afghan National Security Forces who were in the hotel and were clearing the hotel worked their way onto the roof and were securing the roof.”

Samoonyar Mohammad Zaman, a security officer for the Interior Ministry, told The Associated Press that the insurgents were armed with machine guns, antiaircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to The AP.

Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban was targeting foreigners and Afghans who assisted them. He is the Taliban spokesman for the north and east.

“Our muj entered the hotel,” he said, referring to Taliban fighters, “and they’ve gone through several stories of the building and they are breaking into each room and they are targeting the 300 Afghans and foreigners who are staying.” His claims could not be immediately confirmed.

The New York Times said that the attack appeared to be in the style of previous assaults carried out by armed men in suicide vests in Afghanistan in recent years by the Taliban and its allies in the Haqqani network, a militant group based in Pakistan.

It was a rare, nighttime attack in the Afghan capital. Streets leading to the Inter-Continental hotel were blocked. The hotel sits on a hill overlooking Kabul.

Azizullah, an Afghan police officer who uses only one name, told an Associated Press reporter at the scene that at least one bomber entered the hotel and detonated a vest of explosives. Another police officer, who would not disclose his name, said there were at least two suicide bombers.

Jawid, a guest at the hotel, said he jumped out a one-story window to flee the shooting.

“I was running with my family,” he said. “There was shooting. The restaurant was full with guests.”

Other witnesses said that snipers were shooting at security personnel trying to enter the hotel.

The Inter-Continental — known widely as the “Inter-Con” — was once part of an international chain. But when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the hotel, was left to fend for itself.

The landmark hotel, used by Western journalists during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, has been targeted before.

On Nov. 23, 2003, a rocket exploded nearby, shattering windows but causing no casualties.

Twenty-two rockets hit the Inter-Con between 1992 and 1996, when factional fighting convulsed Kabul under the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani. All the windows were broken, water mains were damaged and the outside structure pockmarked. Some, but not all, of the damage was repaired during Taliban rule.

Other hotels in the capital have also been targeted.
In January 2008, militants stormed the capital’s most popular luxury hotel, the Serena, hunting down Westerners who cowered in a gym during a coordinated assault that killed eight people. An American, a Norwegian journalist and a Philippine woman were among the dead.

Attacks in the Afghan capital have been relatively rare, although violence has increased since the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden in a US Special Forces raid in Pakistan and the start of the Taliban’s annual spring offensive.

On June 18, insurgents wearing Afghan army uniforms stormed a police station near the presidential palace and opened fire on officers, killing nine.

Late last month, a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan police uniform infiltrated the main Afghan military hospital, killing six medical students. A month before that, a suicide attacker in an army uniform sneaked past security at the Afghan Defense Ministry, killing three people.

(Sara Ghasemilee, a senior editor at Al Arabiya English

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