Four men have been arrested after Taliban gunmen and a suicide bomber stormed the most luxurious hotel in Afghanistan and killed seven people including three foreigners, officials said Tuesday.A Filipina, a Norwegian and a US national were among the dead after Monday’s attack on the five-star Kabul Serena hotel, a hub of foreign businessmen and diplomats and home to embassies including Australia’s. Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Salah told reporters the arrested suspects included a man who was supposed to have carried out one of multiple suicide bombings at the hotel, but “for some reason did not.”
The others were a man said to have transported the attackers to the hotel and two suspected of accommodating them in the city, Salah said. “We’ve captured the planners of this terrorist attack,” he said. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said four men armed with Kalashnikovs “entered the Serena hotel and fired on foreigners.” The group stormed the security gate, killing at least two Afghan guards, a hotel spokesman said, asking not to be identified by name.