KABUL – Afghan security forces have ended the siege on the Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul 13 hours after it was kicked off by a group of gunmen, an official said Sunday.
Speaking to ToloNews, a local news agency, Najib Danish, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said four gunmen and six people, including a foreign woman had been killed in the siege.
A dpa reporter on scene however said gunshots and several loud explosions continued even after the official announcement that the attack was over.
Danish said seven others were injured in the incident and 153 people, including 41 foreigners, among them eight women, had been rescued by security forces.
A security source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the last floor of the hotel was still not clear.
An eyewitness who was residing at the Hotel Intercontinental during the attack said gunmen were hammering on hotel room doors, asking for foreigners and Afghan government staff and shooting them.
"I don't have the exact number of casualties, but it is far more than what officials say," Mumtaz Ahmad, an employee of the Afghan Communication Ministry in southern Helmand, said Sunday morning briefly after he had been rescued by special forces from the hotel.
Ahmad said he saw three armed gunmen running in the ground floor, adding that he saw "many foreigners in the restaurant and people in the hotel were talking of another meeting with foreign guests."
Ahmad himself spent 12 hours barricaded with many others in a room of the hotel director secured by his guards on the 4th floor.
Mumtaz had traveled from beleaguered Helmand to attend an annual ministry conference in the hotel. He had not seen any of his colleagues yet, he said in the morning.
Pictures from ToloNews, a local news agency, had earlier showed guests trying to climb down the top floor windows.
Flames were licking out of the roof, with the facade of the hotel blackened by several fires during the night.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had earlier neither confirmed nor denied the attack in a text to dpa, saying sources needed to be contacted.
This is not the first time the hotel has been the target of a militant attack. In 2011, Taliban fighters stormed the building, launching a gun battle in which 21 people were killed, including nine attackers.
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