[glaberficken]

In hot conflict areas some hotels are usually used to house people who are still having to go about their business. Such as airline pilots, journalists, ngo people etc... usually the fact that the hotel is being used for such purpose is common knowledge and there is some sort of extra military protection given. Of course this can also backfire as depending on the multiple interests of the factions involved in the conflict it can be in their interest to attack, ignore, or defend such buildings...in the case of this hotel in particular it had already been attacked in 2011 before this attack described in the article (which happened in 2018). You can read more about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Inter-Continental_Kabul