Australia said yesterday it relocated its Afghanistan embassy out of a popular luxury hotel in Kabul that Taliban rebels stormed in a brazen, multi-pronged attack that killed seven people.
The gunmen threw grenades and fired AK-47s in the Monday evening assault, hunting down Westerners who cowered in a gym -- a coordinated assault that could signal a new era of brazen Taliban attacks. One attacker blew himself up despite heavy security at the Serena Hotel. One American and a Norwegian journalist were among the dead, officials said.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the country's embassy in Afghanistan, which had been in the Serena, has been relocated. He said no embassy staff were hurt or killed in the attack. Australian officials told its citizens to avoid the Serena "at this time."
Witnesses described bullet marks, pools of blood and heavy damage inside the hotel, though no damage was seen to its exterior at daybreak yesterday.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary yesterday raised the death toll to seven. Bashary late on Monday said six people had been killed and six wounded.
More than 30 US soldiers in a half-dozen Humvees rushed to the hotel as part of a quick reaction force following the attack, and security personnel from the nearby US embassy ran through the building looking for US citizens.
"There was blood on the floor all the way to the kitchen," said Suzanne Griffin, who had been in the hotel gym at the time of the attack.
She said she had to step over the lifeless body of a woman when evacuated from the locker room.
Griffin, 62, who was working for Save the Children, said she heard a lot of gunfire while in the gym.
"It was very close, close enough that plaster came off the ceiling," she said shortly after the attack. "We all just sat on the floor and got as far as we could from any glass ... We turned our phones on silent."
It was the deadliest direct attack on a hotel in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The assailants appeared to concentrate their assault on the Serena's gym and spa, where foreigners relax and work out at night, suggesting the militants had cased the hotel in advance.
The Taliban has targeted aid workers and civilian contractors with kidnappings and killings, but this was the most daring and sophisticated attack yet and was aimed at a prominent symbol of foreign presence in the country.
Taliban attacks have typically targeted Western and Afghan government or security personnel, not Western civilians.
The multi-pronged assault began around 6pm, when the Norwegian embassy was hosting a meeting at the Serena for visiting Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described Stoere as the target of the attack.
Witnesses said they first heard gunfire, then several explosions -- likely from hand grenades -- and also one large blast -- the suicide bomb.
One of the militants was shot to death and a Taliban spokesman said a second died in the suicide explosion. It was not clear what happened to the other attackers.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that four militants with suicide vests attacked the hotel -- one bomber who detonated his explosives and three militants who threw grenades and fired guns. The claim could not be verified but came very soon after the attack. The bomber was not included among the count of the dead.
In Washington, two State Department officials said that one American citizen had been killed. The victim's identity was being withheld pending notification of relatives, the official said on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.
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