Six U.N. foreign staff were killed when Taliban militants attacked an international guest-house in Kabul on Wednesday, while rockets were fired at a foreign-owned hotel in the Afghan capital, forcing 100 guests into a bunker, Reuters reported.
An increasingly resurgent Taliban have vowed to stage attacks ahead of a run-off in Afghanistan's presidential election on Nov. 7 and the apparently coordinated assault on Wednesday will raise questions about security for the vote.
The attacks occurred as U.S. President Barack Obama weighs whether to send more soldiers to Afghanistan to fight a Taliban insurgency at its fiercest since 2001.
"The number right now is six dead, all of them U.N. staff," said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, adding at least nine were wounded in the attack on the guest-house.
Their nationalities were unclear. Afghan forces exchanged gunfire for hours with militants inside the house, police said.
Later the bodies of three suspected suicide bombers, apparently ripped apart when they detonated their explosives, could be seen lying inside the compound.
Abdul Ghaim, a policeman at the scene, told Reuters: "We think they (the militants) are Pakistani."
Officials said the shooting was over but one female guest at the house was still missing and a search was under way inside the building, covered by bullet holes and badly damaged with its walls charred and windows shattered.
"Several Taliban suiciders (took) hostage several U.N. workers in Kabul," the Islamist movement said in an English-language text message sent to Reuters.
Six U.N. foreign staff killed in attack in Kabul (UPDATE)
