More ugliness in Kabul

Alissa Rubin and Rod Nordland have an article in The New York Times about the assault on the Intercontinental:

Several heavily armed attackers stormed one of tKabul’s fortified premier hotels, and sporadic shooting and at least two loud explosions were heard as Afghan security forces battled insurgents for hours afterward.
Coming within a week of President Obama’s announcement of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, the attack underscored the still precarious nature of security, even in the capital, as the transfer of responsibility to Afghan forces is about to begin in several areas of the country, including Kabul.
Later, in the early morning hours, three attackers on the roof of the Intercontinental Hotel were killed by NATO helicopters, a spokesman said. In addition to the three killed on the roof, two others were killed by hotel guards at the beginning of the assault and another was killed either in the attack by the NATO helicopters or by Afghan security forces, The Associated Press reported.
At the end of the fighting at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, Afghan security forces found that there had been eight suicide bombers, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Sediq Sediqi. All were dead.
Eight other people were killed, including one police officer, and eight were wounded, but the police were still going through the hotel room by room, and the final toll could rise, Mr. Sediqi said. All of the dead found so far were Afghans, he said. The attack was one of the largest and most complex to take place in Kabul, although others had higher death tolls.
The heavily guarded Intercontinental Hotel (photo), which sits on a hill on the western side of Kabul, has police guards at its base and intelligence officers stationed at the top of the hill and near the entrance. It was not clear how so many attackers could have breached the building’s defenses.
Attacks in Kabul have been relatively rare, although there was an attack on a similarly soft target in May, when a bomber detonated his explosives on the grounds of a military hospital, killing six people.
In announcing the troop withdrawal, Mr. Obama said he could reduce the number of American forces because the influx of about thirty thousand troops that he ordered more than a year ago had succeeded in pushing back the Taliban. Although the insurgents have been set back, particularly in their strongholds in the south, they have proved themselves still capable of carrying out assassinations and suicide bombings, even in urban centers.
The White House’s nominee to become the next American commander in Afghanistan faced tough questioning from a Senate panel about President Obama’s plan to pull troops from the country. The nominee, Lieutenant General John Allen, said that “surge” of more than thirty thousand American troops had halted the Taliban’s momentum in southern Afghanistan, but he added that the fighting remained intense as insurgents were trying to regain lost territory. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Allen echoed comments by other top commanders in recent days, saying that military leaders advised a more conservative drawdown of troops over the next year than Mr. Obama’s plan.
In the Kabul attack, a NATO spokesman said that the international forces tracked the situation through the night, but left the fighting to the Afghans until early Wednesday, when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was called in.
“Two ISAF helicopters circled the roof of the hotel and then identified three individuals believed to be insurgents on the roof, and the helicopters engaged the individuals with small arms,” said Major Tim James, a NATO spokesman. “They were all wearing suicide vests and were armed, and there were at least two explosions which we believe were the suicide vests detonating. Then Afghan National Security Forces who were in the hotel and were clearing the hotel worked their way onto the roof and were securing the roof.”
Samoonyar Mohammad Zaman, a security officer for the Interior Ministry, said that the insurgents were armed with machine guns, antiaircraft weapons, and rocket-propelled grenades. Mr. Zaman said there were sixty to seventy guests at the hotel. One guest, Jawid, said that he had jumped out of a first-floor window to flee the shooting. “I was running with my family,” he said. “There was shooting. The restaurant was full with guests.”
The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying they intended to kill foreigners and Afghans, according to Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for northern and eastern Afghanistan. “Our muj entered the hotel,” he said, referring to the Taliban mujahideen fighters, “and they’ve gone through several stories of the building and they are breaking into each room and they are targeting the three hundred Afghans and foreigners who are staying.” His claims could not be immediately confirmed.
At least six stories high, the Intercontinental is one of the largest hotels in the city and is frequented by foreigners as well as Afghan officials, who stay there while they are in Kabul on business. It is also often used for conferences and political gatherings.
A major conference starts Wednesday in Kabul on the transition of NATO military and civilian control to the Afghan government, but none of the official meetings were scheduled to take place at the hotel.
The attack was reminiscent of several other recent ones in which multiple insurgents have converged on a public place. More than two dozen attackers converged on downtown Kandahar in May, killing four people and, in February, seven gunmen wearing suicide vests entered the Kabul Bank branch in the eastern city of Jalalabad and killed eighteen people.