Kabul hotel attack kills nine, including four foreigners

KABUL, Afghanistan – Four men with pistols stuffed in their socks attacked a luxury hotel in Kabul on Thursday, opening fire in a restaurant and killing nine people, including four foreigners, officials said.

The attack came just hours after militants killed 11 people in an audacious assault on a police station in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghan authorities initially said only two security guards had been wounded in the brazen assault on the Serena hotel in Kabul. Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Mohammad Ayub Salangi later told the Associated Press that the Afghan fatalities were two men, two women and one child while the foreigners were two women and two men.

He said they were killed Thursday night in a restaurant at the Serena hotel – considered one of the safest places to stay in Kabul. Salangi didn’t provide the nationalities of the foreigners who were killed.

All the victims were gunned down in the hotel restaurant, he said.

The assailants were killed in both standoffs but made their point: Afghan forces face a huge challenge in securing upcoming elections in what will be a major test of their abilities as foreign troops wind down their combat mission at the end of this year.

The attacks show the Taliban are following through on their threat to use violence to the disrupt April 5 vote, which will be the first democratic transfer of power since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Islamic militant movement. President Hamid Karzai is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the assault on the Serena hotel and the earlier attack in Jalalabad, an economic hub near the border with Pakistan.

“Our people, if they decide to attack any place, they can do it,” he said.