Taliban slay 18 in hotel rampage
AS GUNMEN rampaged through Kabul’s InterContinental Hotel, Aziz Tayeb posted a desperate plea on Facebook: “Pray for me. I may die.”
The telecom executive hid behind a pillar on Saturday night as six suicide vest-wearing Taliban attackers stormed the luxury hotel and began spraying terrified guests and staff with bullets.
Mr Tayeb escaped the terrifying ordeal with no physical injuries – but not everyone was so lucky.
At least 18 people were killed, including 14 foreigners – nine of them Ukrainian – in the 12-hour assault as the attackers engaged in a fierce gunfight with Afghan security forces. The terrorists were all eventually shot dead. The death toll is expected to rise.
Some of the 160 guests fled the gunbattle and fire sparked by the assault by shimmying down bedsheets from the upper floors.
“I saw people who were enjoying themselves a second ago screaming and fleeing like crazy, and some of them falling down, hit by bullets,” Mr Tayeb said.
One colleague, who had been stranded on the fifth floor of the six-storey building throughout the attack, told Mr Tayeb that some areas of the hotel resembled a butcher’s shop with blood everywhere.
The attack unfolded almost six years after Taliban insurgents launched a similar assault on the property.
Mumtaz Ahmad said he was walking from his room on Saturday night.
“When the elevator door opened, I saw two armed suicide bombers. People were escaping and the attackers were firing at them,” he said.
The gunmen shot at people who had been enjoying dinner in one of the hotel restaurants before breaking into guest rooms and taking dozens of hostages.
Mr Tayeb and a few friends managed to escape to the hotel’s outdoor pool area where they hid, listening to the horrifying attack metres away.
“I could repeatedly hear blasts one after another, hand grenades, they used many grenades,” he said.
“The second, third and fifth floors were on fire.”
Dramatic television footage from Afghanistan’s Tolo News showed people trapped on balconies at the top of the building climbing down bedsheets to escape.