Posing as diners and hiding six tiny palm-sized

Posing as diners and hiding six tiny palm-sized pistols in the soles of their bulky shoes, the four gunmen managed to get past the metal detector at the
entrance to the hotel, Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said.
Mr. Sediqqi said the government was investigating whether the attackers had some inside help at the hotel. Serena manages its own security force.
Waiters at the hotel said the men then took a table at the buffet-style restaurant, where guests had gathered to celebrate the Persian New Year, known as
Nowruz.
With many other eateries in the city off-bounds to foreigners after the January attack that killed 21 at a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, the supposedly safe
Serena was one of the few locations where international diplomats, aid workers, United Nations officials and prominent Afghans still gathered regularly.
On Thursday night, four parliament members were dining there. As the gunmen shot and injured one of the lawmakers, the others tried to fight back by throwing
glasses at the Taliban, Mr. Sediqqi said.
The wife of Mr. Ahmad, the slain journalist, yelled at the gunmen, telling them “Shoot me, not my children,” said waiters at the hotel. Pictures of the
attack’s aftermath showed her lying on the ground, trying to protect the children with her hand.
As diners ran for their lives to the basement, the Taliban kept shooting, officials said.
The restaurant’s walls were pockmarked with bullet holes on Friday, and several windows were blown out. Blood coagulated on the tables. Workers were ripping
out the restaurant’s blood-soaked floorboards, the floor littered with used latex gloves.
In the women’s restroom, where at least one of the Taliban gunmen sought refuge once heavily armed Afghan security forces arrived, the walls were ripped
with high-velocity rounds. One passed through the mirror and others chipped off chunks of marble.
Afghan ID cards of three of the gunmen, recovered on the scene and displayed by the Ministry of Interior on Friday, showed them to be residents of the
southern province of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, and in their 20s.
One Western witness was in the hotel’s coffee shop when he heard the first gunshots. He spent around three hours hiding in a basement room crowded with
other guests. “Some people were taking it worse than others,” he said. “There was a lot of talking. Pretty much everyone who could lit up a cigarette.”
Foreigners who had fled the restaurant saw the attackers “running up to people and shooting them point-blank in their face,” the Western witness added.
An American witness, Kabul-based attorney Kimberley Motley, described a gruesome scene in the lobby after the insurgent assault ended. Afghan security forces
“dragged the bodies from the restaurant to outside,” she said.