JNN 29 June 2011 Kabul, Afghanistan — Militants and suicide bombers attacked Kabul’s Hotel Inter-Continental, where they fought Tuesday with Afghan security forces late into the night, Chief of Criminal Investigation Mohammed Zahir told our correspondent .

 Three of about six armed would-be suicide attackers who attacked Kabul’s Inter-Continental Hotel at 10 p.m. Tuesday were shot dead by police; another detonated his explosives and two were still resisting from the top levels of the hotel, said Afghan Lt. Gen. Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, the city’s chief of police, early Wednesday.

The Afghan National Police and the Afghan army are in control of the area, he told CNN, adding that the casualty toll was not yet clear.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in an e-mail that the suicide attackers entered the hotel after killing the security guards at the entrance.

“One of the suicide attackers told us on the phone that they are in the lobby and chasing guests into their rooms by smashing the doors of the rooms and he added that they have killed about 50 guests of this hotel,” Mujahid told CNN in an e-mail.

Violence has recently climbed across Afghanistan since the Taliban announced an onset of a spring offensive at the beginning of May.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has announced that the month of May was the deadliest for Afghan civilians since 2007 with 368 reported deaths.

In 2010, violence in Afghanistan hit its worst levels since the US-led invasion of the country began in 2001.

At least 2,777 civilians were killed in 2010, according to the UN.

The year also proved the deadliest for the US-led foreign military forces with 711 deaths, surpassing the previous record of 521 annual fatalities set in 2009.

Salangi said Kabul police were on the grounds of the tightly guarded hilltop hotel, but had not been able to communicate with anyone inside, since the phone lines were down.

Salangi could not confirm any casualties — but a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least 10 people had been killed. There were no indications that U.S. military or diplomatic personnel were at the hotel, U.S. officials told CNN.

The Inter-Continental is popular among international guests. A news conference had been scheduled to take place there Wednesday to discuss the planned transition of security from international to Afghan forces that U.S. President Barack Obama announced last week. Obama was briefed on the attack while en route back to Washington from Iowa, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

Three Taliban fighters penetrated the hotel’s typically heavy security in the attack, and one of them detonated an explosion on the second floor, said Erin Cunningham, a journalist in Kabul for The National.

“We’re continuing to hear small-arms fire right now,” our correspondent told from a vantage about 500 meters (a third of a mile) from the hotel more than an hour after the attack. Several snipers were on the roof firing at Afghan security forces, she said.

A few minutes beforehand, she said, rocket-propelled grenades were launched from the roof of the hotel toward the area of the first vice president’s house. A few moments later, she said the hotel was rocked by three explosions, one of which knocked her off her feet. U.S. forces were on the scene, she said.

Members of the Afghan National Security Forces were on the scene, but the city police had the lead, International Security Assistance Force Maj. Jason Waggoner said in a statement. Waggoner said ISAF forces were providing “some limited assistance.”

Electricity around the hotel was shut off, said Jerome Starkey, a reporter for The Times.

The hotel was developed by the InterContinental Hotels Group and opened in 1969. But it has had no association with the group since the Soviet invasion in 1979, though it continues to use the name and logo without connection to the parent company.

The incident came on the same day that Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell announced that NATO and other members of the international community involved in Afghanistan have decided to increase the number of security forces in the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police to 352,000.

The current number of Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police is about 300,000, the commander of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan and commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command told the Atlanta Press Club.

The increased number will be sufficient to give the Afghans security without coalition forces having to do it, he said.