Pray for me, I may die – attack victim
‘LIKE BUTCHER’S SHOP’: BLOOD EVERYWHERE IN HOTEL
Private security team flees as gunmen spray bullets, throw hand grenades.
Kabul
As gunmen went on a night-time rampage through Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Saturday, Aziz Tayeb posted a desperate plea on Facebook: “Pray for me, I may die.”
The telecom executive hid behind a pillar as four heavily armed attackers stormed the luxury hotel and began spraying terrified guests and staff with bullets. At least 18 people were killed, including 14 foreigners, and eight wounded in the 12-hour ordeal as the attackers engaged in a fierce gunfight with security forces.
“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 said yesterday, hours after the trauma.
One colleague, who had been stuck on the fifth floor of the six-storey building throughout the attack, told Tayeb that some areas of the hotel resembled a butcher’s shop, with blood everywhere. The attackers were killed. Tayeb, a regional director for Afghan Telecom in the western city of Herat, was staying at the hilltop hotel with industry colleagues from around the country ahead of an annual conference.
The gunmen shot at people who were dining in a hotel restaurant before breaking into guest rooms and taking dozens hostage, including foreigners.
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, his voice heavy with exhaustion.
“We contacted security officials who arrived an hour later and as we were being escorted out I saw five or six bodies outside the hotel. The second, third and fifth floors were on fire.”
Dramatic television footage from Afghanistan’s Tolo News showed people trapped on balconies climbing down with bedsheets to escape, with at least one losing his grip and falling.
A witness told AFP that the hotel’s security team had fled “without a fight”, leaving guests to their fate.
An interior ministry spokesperson has confirmed to AFP that the hotel’s security had been taken over by a private company just three weeks earlier.
As he waited for news of his colleagues, Tayeb updated his Facebook status to thank his friends for their prayers.
“Staying alive in this country is a mere coincidence,” he wrote.