Kabul, November 21: A Rocket attack near the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul has injured four people, including two members of the Afghan security forces.
One rocket hit the wall of the five-star hotel in downtown Kabul at 6.15pm on Saturday (12.45am AEDT Sunday), Ahmad Farid Raaid, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s health ministry, told AFP.
Zamarai Bashary, spokesman for the interior ministery, said: “It was a rocket that hit in front of the Rabia Balkhi hospital. We have four wounded, three are civilians and one is a police officer.”
Two of the injured civilians were women, he said.
The Serena Hotel, owned by the Aga Khan, was attacked in January 2008 by a commander of the Taliban, with the deaths of eight people.
It is Kabul’s only five-star hotel and has been heavily fortified since the 2008 attack. It is the hotel of choice for visiting VIPs.
It is occasionally shelled, most recently on October 28, the same day that a UN guesthouse came under Taliban attack with the deaths of up to five UN staff and two Afghans.
That attack led the United Nations to withdraw hundreds of international employees, leaving a skeleton staff at its enormous compound in central Kabul.
—Agencies