KABUL — At
least three people were killed when gunmen attacked a hotel popular with
Chinese business people in the Afghan capital Monday, with witnesses reporting
multiple blasts and several bursts of gunfire.
اضافة اعلان
Smoke could be seen
pouring from the multi-story Kabul Longan Hotel as Taliban security forces
rushed to the site and sealed off the neighborhood.
The Taliban claim
to have improved security since storming back to power in August last year but
there have been scores of bomb blasts and attacks, many claimed by the local
chapter of Daesh.
Italian
non-governmental organization Emergency NGO, which operates a hospital just one
kilometer from the blast site, said it had received 21 casualties, including
three people dead on arrival.
It did not say if
those dead were civilians or involved in the attack.
A Kabul police
spokesman said three attackers were killed and one suspect arrested, blaming
the assault on “mischievous elements”.
“All the guests of
the hotel have been rescued and no foreigner was killed. Only two foreign guests
were injured when they threw themselves from an upper story,” chief Taliban
spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid added on Twitter.
Video circulating
on social media showed people clamoring out of windows on the lower floors of
the building, with the hotel sign — in English and Chinese — clearly visible.
Other video showed
huge flames licking out of another section, with thick plumes of smoke.
A helicopter also
made several passes of the area.
The hotel is
popular with Chinese business visitors, who have flocked to Afghanistan since
the Taliban’s return in pursuit of high-risk but potentially lucrative business
deals.
China, which shares
a rugged 76km border with
Afghanistan, has not officially recognized the
Taliban government but is one of the few countries to maintain a full
diplomatic presence there.
Sensitive border
Beijing has long feared Afghanistan could become a staging point for
minority Uyghur separatists in China’s sensitive border region of Xinjiang.
The Taliban have
promised that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for militants and, in
exchange, China has offered economic support and investment for Afghanistan’s
reconstruction.
Maintaining
stability after decades of war in Afghanistan is Beijing’s main consideration
as it seeks to secure its borders and strategic infrastructure investments in
neighboring Pakistan, home to the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
The Taliban are at
pains to portray Afghanistan as safe for diplomats and businesspeople but two
Russian embassy staff members were killed in a suicide bombing outside the
mission in September in an attack claimed by Daesh.
The group also
claimed responsibility for an attack on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul this month
that Islamabad decried as an “assassination attempt” against the ambassador.
A security guard
was wounded in that attack.
Despite owning the
rights to major projects in Afghanistan, notably the Mes Aynak copper mine,
China has not pushed any of these projects forward.
The Taliban are
reliant on China to turn one of the world’s largest copper deposits into a
working mine that would help the cash-strapped and sanctions-hit nation
recover.
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