Taliban attack on restaurant in Afghan capital kills at least 14

View Photo Gallery — Suicide bomber attacks Kabul restaurant: A suicide bomber on Friday attacked a Kabul restaurant popular with foreigners and officials. Deputy Interior Minister Ayoub Salangi said that the bomber died in the assault and that two other men were fatally shot in the vicinity. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.

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KABUL — At least 14 people, including Afghans and foreigners, were killed Friday evening in a commando-style attack by Taliban insurgents on a popular restaurant in the Afghan capital, local police and United Nations officials said.

The attack, one of the deadliest in Kabul in years, began when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the restaurant gate, according to the Interior Ministry. Gunmen then entered and started shooting in the busy dining room.

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Several casualties were reported after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a restaurant popular with Afghan officials, foreigners and business people.

The identities of the dead were not immediately known, but restaurant workers and local security personnel said the gunmen had killed several customers and staff members. Police said the ­Lebanese-born restaurant manager and owner was among the dead.

It was not clear how many people on the premises survived.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, asserted responsibility for the attack and said several German officials had been killed, but this could not be confirmed.

Kabul’s police chief, Gen. Mohammad Zaher, said that “between 13 and 14 people, including Afghans and foreigners,” were killed. Deputy Interior Minister Ayoub Salangi said four of the dead were women, three of them foreigners.

Four United Nations personnel were among those killed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. The four, who were not identified, were among at least 14 persons killed, Ban said in a statement.

The International Monetary Fund’s representative in Afghanistan, Wabel Abdallah, also was among those killed, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in a statement. Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed late Friday that a British national was among the dead, the Associated Press reported. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said two Canadians died in the attack, according to Reuters.

State Department spokes­woman Jen Psaki said the dead did not include any members of the U.S. Embassy staff in Kabul.

The target of the attack was La Taverna du Liban, a Lebanese restaurant in the heart of Kabul’s most exclusive and heavily guarded residential district.

For years, the bistro was a rare haven of relaxation for foreign diplomats, aid workers and Afghan officials in a gray city full of blast barriers and beggars. Hookahs bubbled in an alcove equipped with low couches, and Arabic pop music played in the background. Wine and beer were served discreetly, in china teapots, along with savory Lebanese appetizers of kebab, falafel, tabbouleh and stuffed grape leaves.

In the past year, as international missions began to downsize or leave the capital in anticipation of Western troop withdrawals, the number of ­foreigner-friendly establishments shrank, but La Taverna thrived.

On Friday evenings in particular, it was often full and lively, with laughter rising amid a mix of languages. Kamel Hamade, the owner, was known for the warmth with which he presided over his domain, fingering prayer beads as he chatted with longtime customers about Middle Eastern politics.

Both the liberal atmosphere and the VIP clientele, however, made the restaurant a natural target for the insurgents, who have attacked numerous international facilities here — from aid compounds to luxury hotels — over the years. It also was subjected to periodic official crackdowns on alcohol, and there was an armed attack by unknown assailants, in which Hamade was injured.

In 2011, the restaurant added armed guards and triple-door steel barricades at its entrance to protect customers and win continued approval from foreign embassies and missions for their employees to eat there.

Those precautions were no match for the suicide team that attacked Friday night. Just after 7 p.m., police officials said, an assailant detonated explosives strapped to his body at the restaurant’s entrance, clearing the way for two others to force their way inside.

After a sporadic exchange of gunfire that lasted nearly two hours, security forces said they had shot dead the two attackers inside.

An Afghan cook, reached by cellphone shortly after the bombing, said he and several other kitchen workers escaped over the roof and hid behind the building. He said he heard a huge explosion and then shooting at the entrance.

Later, the same worker said he had seen Hamade running into the dining room with a gun as his co-workers escaped. No eyewitness accounts had emerged as of early Saturday, but it appeared that the Taliban commandos sprayed the room with gunfire, killing Hamade and many of the customers. Several guards and drivers waiting in the street were injured and one possibly killed.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said in an e-mail statement that “as a result of a martyrdom attack on a foreign restaurant . . . a large number of foreign occupiers, most of them Germans, have suffered casualties.”