Afghan hotel attackers were searched twice

Security guards at a top Kabul hotel searched four attackers twice before allowing them to enter a restaurant where they killed nine people with guns reportedly hidden in their shoes.

Video footage, broadcast on Saturday by the private Afghan Ariana television station, shows the four men being searched by security at the Serena hotel’s perimeter gate.

The men then pass through a metal detector, before a guard gives each one a more thorough pat down before letting them through the door.

Nine people, including the Afghan journalist Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two daughters were killed in the attack on Thursday. Ahmad’s one-year-old son was seriously wounded.

Government officials said the attackers smuggled small pistols and several magazines of ammunition in their shoes. The weapons, and the shoes, were displayed to the media on Saturday.

The Serena has one of the strictest protocols of hotels in the Afghan capital. It is surrounded by a fence and visitors must pass through two gates and a metal detector before crossing a courtyard to the hotel’s entrance.

Authorities said two of the gunmen went to the restaurant and killed seven victims by shooting them in the head while two other victims were found in the halls. 

The attackers were shot dead by Afghan soldiers.

The Taliban, which claimed the atttack, has vowed to violently disrupt next month’s presidential election, which will result in the winner replacing the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, in the first democratic power transfer since the 2001 US-led invasion.

Ariana shared the 14 minutes of video of the Serena attack with the Associated Press news agency.