A civilian bodyguard armed with just an assault rifle and a walkie-talkie gave his life after fighting the Taleban for more than 90 minutes when they stormed his guesthouse in Kabul in an attack which left at least a dozen people dead last week.

More than 30 UN staff had been asleep in the compound and if it had not been for Louis Maxwell’s bravery, security chiefs are convinced that the death toll would have been two or three times worse — enough to prompt an immediate and complete UN withdrawal from the country.

“Hero is an understatement,” said his friend and colleague Jamie Farrell. “What he did was above and beyond the call of duty, absolutely.”

Wounded and dangerously low on ammunition, the father of two leapt from a second-storey balcony and was seconds from safety when he heard a woman screaming. He ran back inside the burning building to help her, but it was the last time he was seen alive.

Five UN staff, four Afghan guards and three insurgents died in the attack on October 28. But at least 24 UN workers were led to safety through the back of the compound as Mr Maxwell, 27, kept the insurgents at bay.

“This man engaged numerous attackers inside the guesthouse for a considerable period of time,” said Paul O’Hanlon, a UN security specialist. “He conserved his ammunition. He was lucid. He escaped himself when he thought the job was done, then he went back in and died.

“If he hadn’t done his job the attackers would have pursued them and we’d have had a line of bodies.”

In 2003 the UN pulled out of Iraq after 21 staff were killed in a bomb attack in Baghdad.

Mr Maxwell, a former US serviceman known as Max, called his partner Oliver Smolcic seconds after the first shots rang out at 5.45am. They were talking on VHF radios until 7.20am — just moments before he died.

“He said, ‘Ollie, I’m shot, I’m shot, I’m shot’, and then I lost him,” Mr Smolcic said yesterday. “I asked him to click twice if he was badly hit, but I couldn’t hear anything.”

Mr Farrell was on the phone to Jossie Esto, the UN volunteer Mr Maxwell ran back to save. “She said, ‘I’m at the gate. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do’. Then there was a burst of automatic fire, some small whimpering and that was it.”

In the chaos many of the guests became disoriented and relied on security officers Christian Sobotka, Ashbar Gurung and Laurance Mefful, who managed to lead 19 people to safety. Mr Mefful, from Ghana, was killed.

“There was an explosion after Jossie died — we think that’s when Max was killed,” Mr Farrell added.

Mr Maxwell’s son, Malik, left a moving tribute on his Facebook page. “I miss you daddy,” he wrote. “I do not know what I would do without you. I have been looking at your pictures. I love you so much. I wish you was still here with us. I love you always.”

The UN now believes at least three Taleban suicide attackers, and possibly a fourth, were driven up to the gates of the Bekhtar Guesthouse in a convoy of white Toyota Land Cruisers bearing government number plates. “They dropped the guys off and drove off,” said Mr O’Hanlon.

The attackers, in police uniforms, chatted with four Afghan guards who let them into the compound. Once inside they opened fire, shooting through thin metal doors with AK47 assault rifles to kill the guards outside.

Mr Smolcic, Mr O’Hanlon and Mr Farrell were on the scene in minutes. “I saw a silhouette run across the street into the guesthouse, then someone started shooting at me,” Mr Smolcic said. “I called Max. He was already on the rooftop. He said the attackers were everywhere.”

Huge flames sent a plume of black smoke into the sky as grenades tore through the building. More than an hour after the attack started, a squad of Presidential Guards arrived, but they reportedly fled without helping.

Afghan troops on top of a tower block more than 120m away began firing indiscriminately at the compound. UN staff fear that Max may have been wounded by friendly fire. But praise was heaped on the Afghan General Rahimi, who was in charge of protecting UN staff: he twice ran through the compound main gates and rescued three people.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, criticised Nato and Afghan forces for failing to respond faster to the attack. But he praised Mr Maxwell and Mr Mefful. “For at least an hour, and perhaps more, those two security officers held off the attackers, long enough for their colleagues to escape,” he told the General Assembly. “They fought through the corridors of the building and from the rooftop.”

The Afghan Government and Nato denied failing to respond effectively.

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