The faithful had just finished their morning prayers when the crack and thump of exploding grenades echoed across Kabul. It was the first indication that at a United Nations guesthouse in a smart residential district of the Afghan capital, a deadly assault was under way.

Within a few hours the three-storey hostel would be reduced to a smouldering wreck and almost half of the more than 30 expatriates who called it home would be dead or wounded.

At first light yesterday, a Taleban suicide squad of at least three men dressed in police uniforms sauntered up to the Bekhtar Guesthouse gate. Armed with AK47 assault rifles, machineguns and grenades, they shot the two nightwatchmen dead and blasted their way into the compound.

Their mission: to strike terror into the international community in an attempt to derail Afghanistan’s second-round elections, scheduled for November 7, and bring instability to the region. Across the border in neighbouring Pakistan, nearly 100 people died when a car bomb exploded at a crowded market in Peshawar.

In Kabul, at least five UN staff were killed and at least nine wounded, many of them seriously. Most of the foreign dead were Africans, one was from the Philippines, and one was American. Including the two gatehouse guards, three Afghans were also killed, as were the three attackers.

A Canadian and a German man were among the wounded. One body was too badly burnt to be identified. Unicef said last night that it was gravely concerned that one of its staff at the hostel was unaccounted for.

It was the deadliest attack against the United Nations in Afghanistan since the Taleban Government was overthrown in 2001.

“The first grenade went off and then there was sporadic gunfire for a good half an hour. Single shots and bursts of automatic fire. It sounded like an entry and room clearance,” a former British soldier who lives near by said. “I went outside and a fire had started in one side of the building.”

Inside the hostel a struggle for survival was under way as the terrified inhabitants tried to fight back, escape or avoid the flames. John Turner, 62, an American contractor who survived, told journalists that he fought off the attackers with a Kalashnikov while a handful of his flatmates fled through the compound’s laundry room to safety.

“One suicide bomber killed one of the women just as she was trying to get through the fire,” he said. “He blew himself up.” Another woman was overcome by smoke from the explosions. “The smoke was just choking ... She was crying, yelling ‘I am dying’,” Mr Turner added. “I barely made it myself.”

Police were on the scene almost immediately but it was more than 45 minutes before a commando squad arrived to retake control of the compound. “That’s when the battle really started,” a neighbour said. By then the fire was out of control and a pillar of thick black smoke billowed into the sky.

“I was in the house fighting the Taleban when I heard a foreign woman scream, ‘Please God, save me’,” said Abdul Majid, a police commando involved in the rescue operation. As flames engulfed the upper floors of the building, at least five Westerners leapt off top-floor balconies to try to escape. “It looked like they were being forced out because of the flames and the smoke. I was amazed there were people coming out alive, judging from the amount of smoke and the size of the fire,” the former British soldier said.

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