KABUL: A carefree birthday party and night out to celebrate the start of the Afghan weekend were reduced to destruction and butchery when Taliban gunmen stormed a lakeside hotel, opening fireindiscriminately on wealthy revellers.

Pools of blood, broken glass and hundreds of bullet casings littered the floor in the main dining room, where three young Afghan men were shot dead as they sat at a table sipping energy drinks, cut down in the prime of life. Their blood-drenched bodies lay slumped out of their chairs on the floor.

A middle-aged man stood sobbing over the body of his nephew.

"Yesterday he told me they were coming to this place for a nice evening, now he's lying there dead," he cried.

The weeping of the bereaved and shouts of security officials alone broke the silence Friday at theSpozhmai Hotel, after the 12-hour siege finally ended. Sixteen people were killed.

On a balcony overlooking the glistening lake, a 22nd birthday cake lay half eaten on a table surrounded by a dozen empty chairs. Nearby sprawled the bloodied body of a young man shot repeatedly in the chest.

Like many of the victims, he was dressed in Western clothes -- jeans, T-shirt and sports shoes -- a sign of the wealthy clientele that frequented the upmarket hotel, now battered and bloodied.

For some, the attack prompted a desperate bid for survival.

Police said they had recovered the bodies of three people who jumped into the lake in an effort to save themselves from the Kalashnikov-wielding attackers.

Sharifullah, 30, searched desperately through the wreckage of the Spozhmai for his friend who he lost in the chaos and bloodshed.

"I saw three armed men entering the area where people, families had gathered. Moments later the shooting broke out, people panicked and started screaming," he told AFP.

"I threw myself in a ditch but saw bullets hitting a father, his son and wife who were sitting around a table near me.

"I am not sure if they survived, security forces arrived 20 minutes later, but the shooting continued."

Outside in the car park, flashy new four-wheel-drive vehicles were pockmarked with bullet holes.

One bloodied body of an attacker, who looked like a teenager, lay on the roof wearing traditional shalwa khamis. A second lay twisted in a dining room and a third among the trees down by the lake. AFP