January 16, 2008	Wednesday	Muharram 06, 1429

KABUL, Jan 15: The Taliban warned on Tuesday that they would increase attacks on restaurants in Kabul frequented by westerners, a day after eight people died in a brazen assault on a luxury hotel in the Afghan capital.

Afghan officials said they had arrested four men following Monday’s assault on the heavily guarded and high-profile hotel frequented by western workers and officials for recreation and dinner outings. Among those detained was one of the attackers disguised in a police uniform.

“We will target all these restaurants in Kabul where foreigners are eating,” Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told The Associated Press by phone. “We have jihadists in Kabul right now and soon we will carry out more attacks against military personnel and foreigners.”

Afghan officials accused a militant connected to an insurgent leader in Pakistan of masterminding the attack.

Police said they found a video made by two of the attackers in a home in Kabul, where they arrested two men. A fourth man believed to have driven the attackers to the hotel was arrested in eastern Afghanistan while trying to flee to Pakistan.

Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghanistan’s intelligence service, said three militants had stormed the hotel. A guard shot and killed one attacker at the gate to the hotel’s parking lot, which triggered his suicide vest.

A second attacker blew himself up near the entrance to the hotel’s lobby and the third made it inside the hotel and shot his way through the lobby and toward the gym, Mr Saleh said. A man suspected of being the third attacker was arrested after the assault on Monday. He had been wearing a police uniform during the attack.

The three militants stormed the hotel just after 6pm, hunting down westerners who hid in a gym. More than 30 US soldiers in Humvees rushed to the hotel and security personnel from the nearby US embassy ran to the scene.

Mr Saleh said the attack had been masterminded by Mullah Abdullah, a close ally of Siraj Haqqani, a militant leader thought to be based in Miramshah.

Police arrested one Humayun, allegedly a key link to Abdullah in eastern Afghanistan, on Tuesday as he was trying to flee to Pakistan, Mr Saleh said, accusing him of supplying the assailants with weapons, explosives and suicide vests and driving them to the hotel.

He showed a picture taken from the hotel’s security cameras showing a gunman in a police uniform inside the lobby. He was apprehended 15 to 20 minutes after the attack began, he said.

“The third person, after killing a number of the guests, maybe he changed his mind for some reason, he didn’t detonate himself,” Mr Saleh said. “He changed his clothes and later when security forces searched the premises, he was arrested.”

Authorities raided a house in Kabul where the alleged attackers had spent the night before the attack.—AP