Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said guards at the Inter-Continental hotel killed two insurgents during the assault, which began about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday and ended about 3 a.m. Wednesday. Four other insurgents either blew themselves up or were killed on the roof of the hotel by NATO helicopter airstrikes.
A Taliban spokesman quickly claimed responsibility for the rare nighttime attack in the capital.
Coming on the eve of the transition conference, the attack threw a harsh light on President Barack Obama's recently announced plan to withdraw 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan in a year and to end the American combat role by the end of 2014. Kabul has been designated as one of seven cities and provinces scheduled to start shifting from NATO to Afghan control in July.
Initially, Afghan security forces took the lead in the hotel battle, shutting off electrical power to the neighborhood around the hilltop building and rushing at least 200 troops to the scene. A team of Afghan commandos moved into the hotel, where 60 to 70 guests including provincial officials from around the country and foreign visitors hid in their rooms as machine guns echoed. The insurgents made their last stand on the hotel rooftop, engulfing the top floor in flames and detonating bomb vests as Black Hawk helicopters fired at them with machine guns and rockets.
"We were locked in a room. Everybody was shooting and firing," said Abdul Zahir Faizada, head of the local council in Herat province in western Afghanistan. Like many others staying at the hotel, Faizada came to Kabul for the transition conference.
Nazar Ali Wahedi, chief of intelligence for Helmand province in the south, called the assailants "the enemy of stability and peace."
"Our room was hit by several bullets," Wahedi said. "We spent the whole night in our room."
Kabul deputy police chief Daoud Amin said seven people died in the attack and eight other people two policemen and six civilians were wounded. The attackers were not included in that death toll.
The Taliban fighters made their way to the hotel rooftop where they launched rocket-propelled grenades and ragged bursts of automatic weapons fire at Afghan forces. The gunfire echoed against nearby mountains and red tracer rounds slashed across the sky.
After four hours of sporadic fighting, Black Hawk helicopters staged successive air assaults, circling around the hotel and firing down with machine guns. British army Maj. Tim James, a NATO spokesman, said three or four suicide bombers fired at the choppers and detonated their explosives. Massive concussive blasts flashed orange and hurtled shrapnel in all directions.
The helicopters pounded the flaming rooftop with rockets, ending the melee. Ambulances and fire crews then raced up the hill to retrieve the dead and wounded. An AP reporter saw three bodies in the back of an Afghan police truck and two more in an ambulance.
After the shooting stopped, the lights that had been blacked out in Kabul's Bagh-e-Bala district came back on and shaken guests and employees stumbled down the hotel driveway.
