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SAS fired from Black Hawk - reports

New Zealand SAS troops fired from a Black Hawk Helicopter to bring down Taleban insurgents who were taking "potshots" at civilians from the roof of an Afghanistan hotel, reports say.

At least six suicide bombers stormed the five-storey Inter-Continental hotel in Kabul about 9pm local time (5am NZ time).

Once inside, they went from room to room, attacking the residents, before taking over the roof of the building.

At least 10 Afghan civilians were killed in the battle, which ended when NATO and Afghan forces attacked the militants, killing them all.

Two New Zealand soldiers received "moderate" injuries and were last night recovering in a NATO hospital.

Guardian Kabul correspondent Jon Boone today told Radio New Zealand a unit of New Zealand SAS soldiers had been operating out of a Black Hawk helicopter above the hotel to counter the attacks.

Three insurgents were camped on the roof, attacking civilians and nearby buildings, he said.

"They were taking potshots at the roof... Also, we think, firing rocket propelled grenades into houses including the compound which belongs to one of Afghanistan's vice-presidents."

The two New Zealand soldiers who received injuries were from another unit charged with "mopping up" the attack, Mr Boone said.

It was thought they had been wounded by grenades left in a hotel room, he said.

He reported it was likely the troops would recover in Afghanistan and resume their duties there.

injuries moderate

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp told Radio New Zealand the two SAS soldiers' injuries were due to "blasts and fragmentation".

"I've been advised that they are not life threatening. They are being currently assessed."

Dr Mapp would not diverge exactly how many Kiwis were involved in the operation, but said it was a "smallish number".

He said the conflict took several hours to resolve, with the Afghan Police Crisis Response Unit leading the attack but it "proved to be necessary [for the SAS] to take an active role".

"The CRU, the Afghan police, are always intended to lead the operations. It is obviously also true that our special forces are much more highly trained at this point in time than the CRU."

Prime Minister John Key last night the New Zealand SAS played a "crucial" role in thwarting the terrorist attack.

He said a "handful" of troops - fewer than a dozen, he thought - went to the raid with the Afghani Crisis Response Unit in a mentoring role to observe.

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Before the 19th century there were few if any large hotels in London. British country landowners often lived in London for part of the year but they usually rented a house, if they did not own one, rather than staying in a hotel. Numbers of business and foreign visitors were very small by modern standards. The accommodation available to them included lodging houses and coaching inns. Lodging houses were more like private homes with rooms to let than commercial hotels, and were often run by widows. Coaching inns served passengers from the stage coaches which were the main means of long-distance passenger transport before railways began to develop in the 1830s. The last surviving galleried coaching inn in London is the George Inn which now belongs to the National Trust.

A few hotels of a more modern variety began to be built in the early 19th century. For example Mivart’s, the precursor of Claridge’s, opened its doors in 1812 but, up to the mid-19th century, London hotels were generally small. In his travel book North America (1862), the novelist Anthony Trollope remarked on how much larger American hotels were than British ones. But by this time the railways had already begun to bring far more short-term visitors to London, and the railway companies themselves took the lead in accommodating them by building a series of “railway hotels” near to their London termini. These buildings were seen as status symbols by the railway companies, the largest businesses in the country at the time, and some of them were very grand. They included: The Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria

Many other large hotels were built in London in the Victorian period. The Langham Hotel was the largest in the city when it opened in 1865. The Savoy, perhaps London’s most famous hotel, opened in 1889, the first London hotel with en-suite bathrooms to every room. Nine years later Claridge’s was rebuilt in its current form. Another famous hotel, the Ritz, based on its even more celebrated namesake in Paris, opened in 1906.

The upper end of the London hotel business continued to flourish between the two World Wars, boosted by the fact that many landowning families could no longer afford to maintain a London house and therefore began to stay at hotels instead, and by an increasing number of foreign visitors, especially Americans. Famous hotels which opened their doors in this era include the Grosvenor House Hotel and the Dorchester.

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