Nine killed in Kabul hotel gun attack (original) (raw)

Nine people were killed when gunmen broke into a hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul and attacked diners on Thursday evening.

Two children and four foreign nationals were among the dead, the official said.

Special forces shot the gunmen. The Taliban said it was behind the assault.

The Afghan government has blamed the attack on Pakistan's ceasefire with the Taliban, which it says has enabled the militants to focus on targeting Afghanistan, correspondents report.

Afghan authorities are usually unwilling to voice Kabul's belief that Pakistan is behind violence in Afghanistan, the BBC's David Lloyn, in Kabul, reports.

But Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi was very specific in blaming Pakistan for a ceasefire in the frontier region during the Afghan election campaign, our correspondent says.

The truce allowed the Taliban to move across Afghanistan, and enabled the group to keep open thousands of religious schools, known as madrassas, which Mr Sediqi said "teach terrorists to fight Afghans".