Worst night of my life: Taliban attack survivor
Survivors of the Taliban attack on Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel gave harrowing accounts on Monday of the 13-hour weekend standoff that claimed 18 lives, including 14 foreigners. The siege ended on Sunday with Afghan security forces saying they had killed the last of six Taliban militants who stormed the hotel in suicide vests late the previous night, looking for foreigners and Afghan officials to kill. More than 150 people were rescued or managed to escape, including 41 foreigners. Here are first-hand accounts of the attack from some of the survivors:
ABDUL RAUF
A guest, Rauf, 48, said he had run through the halls of the hotel as an armed man was firing and had then taken cover in his room. “I don’t know if he was the police or a suicide attacker, but he was shooting,” he said by cellphone while hiding under the bed of his hotel room. “Two rooms were on fire and smoke came into my room. I couldn’t breathe until I broke a window with my chair.”
MOHAMMAD HUMAYU N SHAMS
Shams, the telecommunications director of eastern Laghman province, said he was able to escape by jumping into a tree from a hotel window as the attackers roamed the hallways, killing people. “It was the worst night of my life,” Shams said, adding that as he ran, he couldn’t tell the attackers apart from the police because they were all wearing the same uniforms. Along with Shams, five other hotel guests, including a foreigner, managed to jump into the tree.
VASSILI S VA SS IL IO U AND MICHALIS POULIKAKOS
The two Greek pilots, who were in Afghanistan to train local airline pilots, said they survived the attack by hiding in their rooms — one inside a hollow he had cut in his mattress and the other in his bathtub. Vassiliou and Poulikakos were in the hotel restaurant when gunmen burst in through a kitchen service door. They dashed up to their rooms and hid, following emergency instructions they had been given. “We overturned the mattresses and messed up the rooms, then opened the balcony doors to make it look as if we had escaped that way,” Poulikakos told Greece’s private Skai TV on Monday. “I hid in the bathtub. Nobody entered my room, I was very lucky and it all ended after nine hours,” he said. “I was on the fourth floor. Vassilis was on the fifth and he was the only survivor on that floor, there were many more survivors on my floor.” Vassiliou said he spent 13 hours hidden under — and inside — his mattress, and managed to stay undiscovered even as gunmen used his balcony as a firing position. “They broke down my door. and burst in. I had managed to slip under the bed. There were three of them in the room, one went onto the balcony, the other shot at the other bed and lifted it up,” he said. When the gunmen had used up their ammunition they set fire to the fifth floor and disappeared for about an hour and a half. Vassiliou went out to the balcony and realized that there was no escape there — he even came under fire from forces besieging the hotel. “So I went back into the room and used a small pair of scissors to cut an opening for myself inside the mattress and remained there,” he said. That protected him from the heat and the smoke from the fire burning outside his room. “I don’t know why but I was very calm. it was as if something told me that I would live,” Vassiliou said. He said he had shut down both his mobile phones to avoid being betrayed by their ringing, which led authorities to believe he had been killed. He remained in the room from about 9 p.m. to noon the next day, when the gunmen finally ran out of ammunition and left. “I heard English being spoken and came out of my mattress,” he said. Vassiliou added that security forces took an inexplicably long time to reach his floor. “Between 6 and 9 (a.m.) on the fifth floor these four or five people were having fun, joking around,” he said, referring to the attackers. “They would open every door, I heard voices, a couple of shots, and then laughter. They were undisturbed, nobody tried to stop them, and I think that was a big mistake.”
MOHAMMAD MUSA
“When the sixth floor caught fire this morning, my roommate told me, either burn or escape,” said Musa, who was hiding in his room on the top floor. “I got a bed sheet and tied it to the balcony. I tried to come down but I was heavy and my arms were not strong enough. I fell down and injured my shoulder and leg.”
ABDUL RAHMAN NASERI
A guest who was at the hotel for a conference, Naseri was in the hall of the hotel when he saw four gunmen dressed in army uniforms. “They were shouting in Pashto ( language), ‘ Don’t leave any of them alive, good or bad.’ ‘ Shoot and kill them all,’ one of them shouted,” Naseri said. “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.”