A Taliban assault on the restaurant of a luxury hotel, considered one of the safest places in Kabul and frequented by foreigners and Afghan officials, highlights the increase in violence sweeping Afghanistan two weeks before a presidential election, according to the Associated Press.
The Islamist Taliban movement has ordered its fighters to use "full force" to disrupt the vote and threatened to kill anyone who participates in what it calls a Western-backed sham, the AP reported.
Taliban gunmen smuggled tiny pistols past the Serena hotel's heavy security cordon and waited for the restaurant to fill up for an Afghan New Year dinner before emerging to shoot diners point-blank, the AP reported.
Three children between two and five were found with bullets in their heads, according to the AP. Four of the nine dead were foreigners.
The dead Afghans included popular journalist Sardar Ahmad of Agence France-Presse, his wife and two daughters, the AP reported.
Hours later, a bomb attack in the southerly Kandahar province wounded the deputy governor and left his chief of staff in critical condition, according to the AP.
This week alone, seven or eight suicide bombers killed at least 11 people in the eastern city of Jalalabad, while 18 were killed by a bomb in a marketplace in northern Afghanistan, the AP reported.
The April 5 vote is intended to mark the first democratic transfer of power in Afghanistan's history, according to the AP. It will be a pointer to prospects for stability as the NATO-led force that has been reinforcing security since the Taliban were driven from power in 2001 prepares to withdraw most of its troops this year.
With President Hamid Karzai constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, the front-runners include former finance minister Ashraf Ghani and two ex-foreign ministers, Zalmay Rassoul and Abdullah Abdullah, the AP reported.
