Rocket hits luxury hotel in Afghan capital (Roundup)

Nov 21, 2009, 14:32 GMT

Kabul - A rocket hit the perimeter wall of a luxury hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, police and witnesses said.

The southern wall of the luxury Serena Hotel compound was destroyed in the attack, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman said, but could not give further details.

Zamarai Bashary, an Interior Ministry spokesman said that two people were injured in the attacks. The private Tolo television channel however, reporting from the scene, said seven people were wounded when the rocket struck.

'We heard a large explosion outside the hotel and the smoke is still coming out from an area close the hotel,' one of the foreign guests staying at the hotel told German Press Agency dpa.

The Serena, Kabul's only five-star hotel, is popular among foreign diplomats and journalists. The facility has been attacked before. Two rockets landed in the hotel's garden and a nearby park late last month, but caused no casualties.

In January 2008, three Taliban militants equipped with automatic rifles and suicide vests stormed the hotel, killing six people.

The attack came a day after a prominent member of parliament narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in which five of his bodyguards were killed on the western outskirts of Kabul.

Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, a former warlord and key ally of President Hamid Karzai, was travelling in a convoy, when the roadside bomb struck one of the vehicles.

Sayyaf, who was elected to parliament in 2005, was one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance, a group that fought against the Taliban government between 1996 and 2001.

Meanwhile, Ruhul Amin, the provincial governor of western Farah province said Saturday that the number of people killed in a suicide attack in Farah city on Friday morning had risen to 21. Officials had earlier said 13 people were killed.

Amin said 40 people, including seven children, were injured when a bomber on a motorbike targeted a police official in the city centre. The official was among the dead.