Attack in Afghan Capital Illustrates Taliban's Reach.

The guests were still sleeping when the gunmen, dressed in police uniforms, arrived early Wednesday. In the dark, they shot the guards, scaled the front gate of the guesthouse and began firing grenades, the beginning of a terrifying two-hour siege that showed just how little it takes for the Taliban to trap foreigners in central Kabul. By the end of the siege, at least five United Nations employees, two Afghan security officials and the brother-in-law of a prominent Afghan politician were dead, as were their three attackers. But the story of how the rest of the people in the Bakhtar guesthouse had survived was one of courage -- particularly by several United Nations security guards, one of them an American identified by survivors as Max, who held off the attackers for about an hour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]