Capture of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul: at least 18 killed

At least 18 people were killed and 10 were injured with an attack of three terrorists on Saturday evening on the InterconTinental Hotel in Kabul. This was reported by AP with reference to Najib Danish, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Afghanistan.

Of the 18 dead, 14 are foreigners, Danish said, including 11 employees of the private Afghan airline Kamair. Six out of 10 wounded - security forces.

As the official of the consular department of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine Vasily Kirilich, among the dead, one Ukrainian citizen, wrote on his FB page.

On Sunday morning, Reuters reported that at least five people were killed and at least six were injured. The agency noted that the number of dead and victims was significantly less than expected originally.

153 people, including 41 foreigners, were evacuated from the hotel by unharmed, Reuters wrote.

The number of attack participants in different sources was called different - from three to six. The Taliban, who took responsibility for the attack, announced five terrorists. It is alleged that all the attackers at different times were killed by security forces.

As the hotel manager Ahmad Haris Nayab said, the terrorists broke into the building through the kitchen. One of the eyewitnesses claimed that the attackers took hostages from among both guests and hotel workers.

The liberation of the building took about half -sections among special forces. Several BTRs of the US Army, equipped with machine guns, participated in the operation.

The Taliban spokesman Zabhullah Mujahid said that at first it was planned to take the attack on Tuesday evening. However, the action was postponed due to the wedding procession - according to Talib, to avoid victims among civilians.

A few days earlier, the American embassy in Kabul warned the country's authorities about the danger of attacks on hotels.

On January 21, the Information Technology conference was supposed to take place in Intercontinental. At the time of the attack, there were more than 100 IT managers and engineers at the hotel.

Like most public buildings in the capital of Afghanistan, Intercontinental was intensively guarded.

The previous hotel attack was undertaken in 2011. That terrorist attack, like the current attack, committed the Taliban.