STANDOFF

NATO Ends Kabul Hotel Siege

Taliban insurgents killed.

A four-hour siege on a luxury Kabul hotel ended early Wednesday after NATO helicopters swooped in and killed the Taliban attackers. At least six Taliban, some of them suicide bombers, were involved in the assault on the Inter-Continental hotel, which had some senior Afghan officials staying there. The bodies of six civilians, believed to be hotel employees, were found by police, said the Afghan Interior Ministry. According to authorities, at least two attackers were shot by Afghan police who stormed the hotel after the siege began, and another four blew themselves up. The attack came on the eve of a conference about the gradual transition of civil and military responsibility over to Afghanistan.