Intelligence officials laid out a display of items recovered from the assailants, including a suicide vest packed with explosives, burned sneakers, grenades and rocket launchers, and a variety of Afghan identity cards.
A Taliban spokesman, in a news statement Wednesday afternoon, named seven Afghan “freedom fighters” from Konar, Khost, Kunduz, Paktia, Wardak and Zabul provinces as the attackers.
He said that the assailants had killed 90 people — many times the official estimates by Afghan authorities — and that the assault had been planned carefully to disrupt the governors’ conference, sabotage the security transition and deny foreign intelligence officers a secure place to stay in the capital.
Early Wednesday, with the hotel cleared of attackers and its roof charred black from explosions and rockets, emergency workers evacuated the last of the wounded and described scenes of panic and chaos as the siege erupted.
“I saw a foreigner dead near his computer. I saw an Afghan official throwing himself from a window,” said Ahmad Fahim, a police officer.
But the scheduled governors’ conference proceeded as planned in a government hall. Ashraf Ghani, a senior minister leading the conference, said at the opening session that attacks would not deter the government from its plans.
“The transition process will be implemented under any form,” Ghani said. “Our enemies should know that they cannot disrupt this process. We will spare no sacrifice, and this will not change our resolve.”
Outside the hotel, where police had blocked the steep driveway to all visitors and traffic, some employees gathered and spoke of their co-workers — including a cook and a guard — who died in the assault.
Naim Rasool, 22, a butcher on the hotel kitchen staff, said he lost three of his friends.
Ahmad Jan, a driver for a cement contractor who was dining at the hotel Tuesday night, may have been the first person to spot the attackers. He was waiting in the parking lot when two men with assault rifles appeared and opened fire on the guards at the front entrance.
“They just killed them and kept going,” Jan said. “There were a lot of private bodyguards waiting outside, and some of them also opened fire. It was hard to know who was who.
“Then I looked up and saw people jumping from windows. When they landed, some of them broke their hands.”
Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
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