Taliban gunmen hunted 'pimps' and 'prostitutes', say witnesses

For eight-year-old Rasoul Khan, a cleaning job at a favoured weekend relaxation spot for Kabul's wealthy was meant to help bring a better life in a country stricken by widespread poverty.

Instead, the Spozhmai Hotel beside Qargha Lake will probably evoke terror whenever he remembers the five Taliban gunmen who burst through its doors as the privileged gathered to relax on the eve of the Friday religious holiday. "They were asking everyone where the pimps were. They shot anyone who would not co-operate with them," said Khan, bearing a facial injury and standing barefoot after fleeing the leafy grounds.

For the deeply conservative Taliban, men and women who simply mingle, perhaps flirt, are condemned as pimps and prostitutes who deserve punishment sanctioned by God.

The attack again showed the ability of insurgents to easily stage high-profile raids even as NATO nations prepare to withdraw most of their combat troops by the end of 2014 and leave Afghans to lead the fight.

Gunmen shifted a large store of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), heavy weapons and rifles, as well as suicide vests, into the stone-walled, single storey structure surrounded by trees and gardens. The Taliban said it launched the attack to target wealthy Afghans and foreigners who used the hotel, about 10 km (6 miles) from the centre of Kabul, for "wild parties".

The hotel, like a building site in central Kabul used by militants in April to unleash barrages of RPGs and automatic gunfire on Western embassies, was only lightly defended by a handful of poorly paid 'chowkidar' guards.

Human shields
As in the earlier attack in the city centre, two guards were immediately shot dead, beginning a horrifying 12-hour ordeal in which hostages were used as human shields against a counter-attack by Afghan and Norwegian special forces.

With a quavering voice, Ebadullah, 14, another cleaner at the hotel, described how one of his friends wet himself when an insurgent demanded information on the whereabouts of other guests who had not been hunted down. "He cried and said that he was an orphan and was the only bread winner for his family," said Ebadullah, wearing traditional baggy trousers and a long flowing shirt. "They were calling to everyone 'where are the pimps, where are the prostitutes'. They killed many people."

Inside the hotel, around eight bodies, some with bullet wounds to the head, still lay on the floor amid shattered doors and windows.

A bomb lay beneath the body of a young man — planted by the Taliban to inflict more casualties. Many of the victims were dressed in jeans and shirts, the kind of Western clothes that used to draw fury from the Taliban. It seems they were shot while trying to hide.

At a military hospital in Kabul where the wounded were treated, engineer Salder Rahi recalled how he had gone to the hotel to meet his brother and three friends. By the end of the ordeal, his sibling was among the dead. "They opened fire on everybody. Everybody just ran. There was a party outside and I saw the father shot dead and his wife wounded," Rahi said.

Some, like Abdullah Samadi, 24, feel so lucky to be alive they believe it had to be divine intervention. He was just settling in at about 9 pm when he heard a huge blast from an RPG, followed by gunfire. "We tried to escape, but we were surrounded by suicide bombers. We hid ourselves beneath a tree until morning. God protected us," he said.

The gunmen, Samadi said, had been closely watching their prisoners and searching for illegal stocks of wine. "Around dawn they came closer to us and we had to jump in the water," he said. "We were there until 9 am and then the situation got better and we slowly, slowly swam toward security forces."

(Writing by Rob Taylor)