Four arrested after Kabul hotel attack kills seven
Kabul, 2008 Jan 15, Al-Manar
Four men have been arrested after Taliban gunmen and a suicide bomber stormed the most luxurious hotel in Afghanistan and killed seven people including three foreigners, officials said Tuesday.
A Filipina, a Norwegian and a US national were among the dead after Monday's attack on the five-star Kabul Serena hotel, a hub of foreign businessmen and diplomats and home to embassies including Australia's.
Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Salah told reporters the arrested suspects included a man who was supposed to have carried out one of multiple suicide bombings at the hotel, but "for some reason did not."
The others were a man said to have transported the attackers to the hotel and two suspected of accommodating them in the city, Salah said.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said four men armed with Kalashnikovs "entered the Serena hotel and fired on foreigners."
The group stormed the security gate, killing at least two Afghan guards, a hotel spokesman said, asking not to be identified by name.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which has 40,000 troops in Afghanistan, said hotel guards shot dead one attacker, but it was unclear what had happened to the others.
A Western security official said the gunmen opened fire after the suicide bomber detonated himself. That blast was followed by a second explosion believed to be another suicide bomber.
Afghan officials said anywhere between two and five militants were involved in the attack, one of the most brazen assaults on foreign civilians in the capital since a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.
Three people were killed in the health club - a US national who was a member of the facility, a Filipina employee and an Afghan staffer, the hotel spokesman said.
The Taliban movement said it carried out the attack to herald a year of new tactics in its intensifying insurgency against the government and its international allies. It was planned to coincide with a visit by Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed claimed Tuesday. The minister was unharmed, taking shelter with the other guests and staff in a basement cafeteria.
UN chief Ban Ki-Moon, who suggested the attack may have been aimed at the Norwegian minister, said the incident "really confirms that we must take necessary measures to address" terrorism. Australia announced meanwhile that it was relocating its embassy out of the hotel, where it had been based.
8 policemen died Sunday after dozens of Taliban fighters stormed a police post in Kandahar province's Maywand district, which has been known as a Taliban stronghold for years.
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