Hotel guests beheaded in killing spree

Foreigners targeted in deadly Taliban attack

TALIBAN militants who killed at least 22 people at a luxury Kabul hotel went from room to room searching for foreigners and survivors, a security source said yesterday as more details of the victims emerged. Insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs and suicide vests attacked the landmark Intercontinental Hotel overlooking the Afghan capital in an assault that lasted more than 12 hours and prompted questions over how the attackers had breached security.

Guests hid behind pillars and in rooms as gunmen sprayed bullets and set fire to parts of the six-storey building.

Some people climbed over balconies and used bed sheets in a desperate attempt to escape.

“They were saying: ‘Kill the foreigners!’,” a 20-year-old hotel security employee said from his hospital bed.

He described hiding in a fifth-floor room and listening as the gunmen went from room to room, forcing doors open with daggers and killing those inside.

“They didn’t want to kill the Afghans,” a security source said. “The weapons and bullets they had were for the foreigners.”

One other witness said he had seen the militants beheading guests.

The attack ended on Sunday with all six militants killed by Afghan forces, aided by Norwegian troops.

Health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh said 22 bodies had been taken to Kabul hospitals. “Some of the bodies [are] badly burnt and need DNA tests to be identified.”

At least seven Ukrainian citizens were among the dead, the country’s ambassador to Tajikistan and Afghanistan, Viktor Nikitiuk, said.

“A lot of Ukrainian aviation technicians work in Afghanistan,” he said.

“All the dead worked for the airline Kam Air and lived at the Intercontinental Hotel.”

Kam Air, an Afghan carrier, said a further two Venezuelan staff were also killed in the assault, bringing the airline’s loss to at least nine of its personnel -- five crew and four pilots.

One German citizen and one Kazakh citizen were also killed, their foreign ministries said.

Afghan officials said that senior Afghan diplomat Abdullah Poyan died, along with Mufti Ahmad Farzan, a member of the High Peace Council responsible for reconciliation efforts with militants.

The unnamed security employee said he saw two fashionably dressed gunmen in the hotel restaurant before the assault began.

The source confirmed investigators had seen CCTV footage showing the attackers in the restaurant prior to the attack.

“It was around 8.30pm.They were sitting in the corner of the hotel and they immediately started spraying bullets,” he said.

He ran to the fifth-floor room and locked himself inside, though not before seeing many bodies on the ground.

But as the gunmen went from door to door he leapt from the window in terror. “I fell on people lying in blood, it was horrific,” he said.

Knocked unconscious, he awoke in hospital with a broken leg and other wounds.

Another survivor said the attackers beheaded some guests and people inside the hotel.

He said he worked at the hotel checking its security cameras, but fled to the fourth floor as the power went off and the attack began.

Also describing the militants as wearing civilian clothes, he said they killed dozens of people, opening every single room and raining bullets. He, too, jumped from a window to escape. Authorities said they were still investigating how militants breached hotel security, which was taken over by a private company three weeks ago.