At least three gunmen attacked the Kabul Serena hotel in Afghanistan Sunday, leaving a hotel guard and one of the rebels dead.
The Taliban said its men, including a suicide bomber, carried out the attack on the Kabul Serena, a five-star hotel that generally lodges tourists and foreigners.
According to Norway's government, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere was in the hotel at the time of the attack but was safe and sheltering in the basement.
A loud explosion was heard throughout the city and a Kabul Serena employee said there had been a bomb blast in the parking lot. However, Afghan officials could not immediately give details until a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the insurgent group was responsible.
"Four members of the Taliban, one of them wearing a suicide vest and all armed with Kalashnikovs, entered the Serena hotel and opened fire on foreigners," Mujahed told AFP.
"One of them exploded himself," he said.
The Serena, opened in November 2005, is the main venue for top-level functions of the government, foreign embassies and businesses in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. It sits across from the presidential palace as well.
It is heavily barricaded and reinforced because of the security threats, with a Taliban-led insurgency at its peak.
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