Four arrested after Kabul hotel attack: Afghan intelligence
KABUL (AFP) — Four men have been arrested over an attack on Kabul's most luxurious hotel, Afghanistan's intelligence chief said, as officials said seven people, including three foreigners, were killed.
Among those arrested after the attack late Monday on the Kabul Serena was a man who was supposed to carry out a suicide attack at the hotel but "for some reason did not," intelligence chief Amrullah Salah told reporters.
The others included a man said to have transported the attackers to the hotel, he said. The other two were suspected of accommodating the team of attackers in the city, Salah said.
"We've captured the planners of this terrorist attack," he said.
The interior ministry has said seven people were killed in the attack, which included a suicide blast and gunfire.
Hotel and government officials have announced separately that the dead included a Filipina, a Norwegian photographer and a US national.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon suggested the attack may have been targeting Norway's visiting Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, who was inside the luxury Serena hotel at the time and took shelter with other guests in the basement.
The Serena hotel, opened in November 2005, is the main venue in the capital for high-level functions of the Western-backed government, as well as foreign embassies and businesses.
As such it is heavily barricaded and guarded against security threats amid an increasingly violent Taliban-led insurgency.
Australia, which has around 900 troops operating in Afghanistan, announced Tuesday that it was relocating its embassy out of the hotel.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said four men armed with Kalashnikovs "entered the Serena hotel and fired on foreigners." One of them was wearing a suicide vest and blew himself up.
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 any others.
A Western security official here, speaking on condition of anonymity, said soldiers had entered every room to search for any remaining attackers.
"First there was a suicide attack at the entrance of the hotel, followed by a second explosion ... Then there was gunfire," he said.
He was not able to say if the second blast was also a suicide bombing or if the gunfire came from guards or the militants.
UN chief Ban suggested the attack, which came as Stoere was preparing for a dinner meeting, may have been aimed at him.
"I feel fortunate that he was not injured, but that really confirms that we must take necessary measures to address" terrorism," he told reporters at the United Nations in New York.
The US State Department confirmed a US citizen was among the dead but would not release their identity or indicate if they were civilian or military until next of kin had been informed.
The Norwegian reporter, Dagbladet correspondent Carsten Thomassen, 39, died during surgery at a NATO hospital near Kabul's airport, the daily said in its online edition.
The Norweigan foreign ministry said two of its citizens, a photographer and a diplomat, had been injured.
The official WAM news agency of the United Arab Emirates cited its foreign ministry as saying a member of its Kabul embassy staff was injured.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd praised embassy staff. No Australians were killed or injured in the attack.
"This is a sober reminder of the difficult, dangerous operating environment in Afghanistan," he told reporters in Sydney.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the embassy had relocated.
"Unfortunately, a number of other nationals were killed in the attack and I extend my deepest sympathies to their families."
The Taliban were in government in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were ousted in a US-led invasion launched weeks after the September 11 suicide attacks in the United States by the Al-Qaeda group, which was being sheltered by the hardline Islamic movement.
The Taliban have since been waging an insurgency against the government in Kabul and the international forces shoring it up.
Most attacks have been focused on the southern and eastern areas bordering Pakistan, but rippled across the country last year in the deadliest 12 months in the insurgency to date.
