The Taliban took aim at Afghanistan’s intelligence services today, killing four people and injuring more than 30 in two separate attacks.
A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed two people and wounded more than 35 near the Afghan parliament today in what was the third bomb attack in the capital Kabul in less than a month.
The suicide bomber today targeted a minibus carrying Afghan intelligence personnel in a western district of the city near to the country's parliament building, said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's crime investigation unit.
Mr Zahir said one intelligence official and one civilian had been killed and up to 36 were wounded, most of them civilians. "Some of the wounded are in critical condition and the death toll may rise," he told Reuters.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by phone the militant group had carried out the attack.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "inhumane and un-Islamic".
About an hour after the attack, in the troubled eastern province of Kunar, a remote-controlled roadside bomb killed an intelligence service colonel and his driver, and wounded two bodyguards. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that incident.
Elsewhere, three troops were killed today in eastern Afghanistan by a homemade bomb, the
Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said.
Violence is at its worst since US-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001 after it refused to hand over al-Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, following the September 11th attacks on the United States.
But attacks in the Afghan capital had been relatively rare in the past year, particularly since a "ring of steel" was erected in the city before a parliamentary election in September.
Reuters