'Everybody was shooting': 10 die in Kabul hotel attack

KABUL, Afghanistan — Police scoured one of Kabul's landmark hotels room-by-room on Wednesday after an overnight assault by suicide bombers killed at least 10 people. Armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons, the eight attackers stormed the heavily guarded Inter-Continental hotel, frequented by Westerners and VIPs, before a NATO helicopter killed the remaining insurgents in a final rooftop battle that ended a five-hour standoff.After several explosions, attackers entered the hotel late on Tuesday and made their way to the ballroom, a hotel receptionist said. Some carried tape recorders playing Taliban war songs and shot at anyone they saw. Guests jumped from second and third floors to escape, the receptionist told Reuters, asking not to be identified. A lone suicide bomber, who had been injured in the attack, later blew himself up in one of the rooms, officials said."The police are still searching room-by-room to see if there are any casualties or any threats," Kabul police chief Ayoub Salangi told reporters. Some foreign hotel guests were driven away in diplomatic vehicles while others waited on a street outside the hotel as the sun rose over the Afghan capital early Wednesday.

The attack on a five-story hotel raised doubt about the ability of Afghan security forces to take charge of securing the nation from foreign combat forces.

Salangi said the attackers, who were able to penetrate the hotel's tight security, attacked at around 10 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET) Tuesday on the eve of a conference about transferring responsibility for security across the nation from foreign combat troops to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014.

Salangi said most of the 10 victims were workers and cooks employed at the hotel. He provided no further details, but said none of the conference attendees staying at the hotel were harmed.

"There were no casualties among the guests — either foreign or Afghan," he said. "No high-ranking government officials were killed."

Nazar Ali Wahedi, chief of intelligence for Helmand province in the south, called the assailants "the enemy of stability and peace" in Afghanistan.

"Our room was hit by several bullets," said Wahedi, who is attending the conference elsewhere in the capital. "We spent the whole night in our room."