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Gunmen attack Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, take hostages, deaths reported

KABUL - A group of as many as four gunmen attacked the Intercontinental Hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday night, seizing hostages and exchanging gunfire with security forces as the building caught fire and residents and staff fled.

 

Hotel manager Ahmad Haris Nayab, who managed to escape unhurt, said the attackers had got into the main part of the hotel through a kitchen and people fled amid bursts of gunfire on all sides.

 

Afghan interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said many details of the raid, which came days after a US embassy warning of possible attacks on hotels in the capital, were still unclear and there were no official casualty figures.

 

However Nasrat Rahimi, another interior ministry spokesman, said several people had been killed and at least six wounded.

 

In addition, at least two of the raiders had been killed as Afghan Special Forces cleared the first floor and moved to the second, battling the attackers who appeared to have a large supply of hand grenades.

 

According to one witness, who did not want to be quoted by name, the attackers took some hotel staff and guests hostage.

 

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the latest in a long series of attacks in Kabul underlined once more the precarious situation in the Afghan capital, where hundreds of civilians were killed last year despite ever increasing security measures.

 

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 01.20.18, 19:34