KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban struck a restaurant popular with Westerners in downtown Kabul on Friday in what appeared to be a well-coordinated assault, with a suicide bomber clearing a path for two gunmen, who rushed in and fired on diners, the police said. At least 16 people were killed, most of them foreigners.

The attack appeared to be one of the deadliest against Western civilians in Kabul since 2001, with Afghan and Western officials saying as many as 13 of the dead were expatriates.

Initially, there was no word about the nationalities of those killed or which organizations they worked for, but later Friday, a statement from the office of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said, “Four United Nations personnel, along with a number of those from other international organizations, are now confirmed dead.”

On Friday evening, the International Monetary Fund said its representative in Afghanistan, Wabel Abdallah, was among those killed.