Kabul hotel attack: guests 'sprayed with bullets as they ran' - The Guardian

Afghanistan
Witnesses describe scenes of terror at Intercontinental hotel during attack that killed at least 18 including 14 foreigners
Witnesses to a terrorist rampage at a luxury Kabul hotel have described guests being sprayed with bullets as they ran, whole floors engulfed in flames and a security team that fled “without a fight” from gunmen in army uniforms.

Thick smoke billowed from Kabul’s Intercontinental hotel on Sunday as Afghan and western security forces regained control of the building after a 14-hour siegeinvolving dozens of hostages including foreigners. Some guests tried to escape the carnage and a later fire by using bed sheets to climb down from balconies.

At least 18 people were confirmed to have been killed, including four Afghans and 14 foreigners. The Afghan news agency Tolo claimed one of its reporters had seen “dozens [of] bodies” and other witnesses compared the inside of the hotel to a butcher’s shop.

Representatives from the airline Kam Air told Reuters that about 40 of its crew, including many foreigners, were staying in the hotel and as many as 10 had died and many were still missing.

“Pray for me, I may die,” wrote the Afghan Telecom executive Aziz Tayeb in a plea he posted to Facebook while hiding behind a pillar on Saturday evening after the heavily armed men stormed the building.

“I saw people who were enjoying themselves a second ago screaming and fleeing like crazy, and some of them falling down, hit by bullets,” Tayeb told Agence France-Presse on Sunday after escaping the hotel.

Abdul Rahman Naseri, another guest, was in the hall of the hotel when he saw four men dressed in army uniforms. “They were shouting in Pashto: ‘Don’t leave any of them alive, good or bad. Shoot and kill them all,’” Naseri told Reuters. “I ran to my room on the second floor. I opened the window and tried to get out using a tree but the branch broke and I fell to the ground. I hurt my back and broke a leg.”

Another guest, Ahsan Ali, told the Observer: “People ran to their rooms and locked themselves in – it was a dreadful scene.”

Witnesses said the men appeared in the building from the kitchen at about 9pm local time, spraying bullets at diners in the restaurant before breaking into rooms at the hotel and taking hostages. 

Tayeb was one of more than 100 telecom executives and 34 provincial officials who were staying at the site before a conference on Sunday. The building, one of two major luxury hotels in the city, is state owned and not affiliated with the InterContinental chain.

The interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said a private company had taken over security at the hotel about three weeks ago. A witness told Agence France-Presse the guards had fled “without a fight”.

“They didn’t attack. They didn’t do anything to them. They had no experience,” the 24-year-old hotel employee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said the security team were alongside him as he fled the building: “I was asking them, where should I go?”- Read More

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