Suicide car bomb blast in Kabul kills 2, wounds 4

In Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, a suicide car bomb exploded at the western entry gate of the city, instantly killing at least three soldiers and wounding four others, an Afghan official said.

According to Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian, the explosion on Friday targeted a government forces’ checkpoint near the gate of the capital Kabul.

No one has claimed responsibility, though suspicion immediately fell on the Taliban.

The attack on the army checkpoint follows weeks of violence, including an attack by gunmen earlier this month that killed 22 people, mostly students of the Kabul University. The assault was claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group.

On Thursday, Taliban fighters attacked a government security forces’ checkpoint in northern Kunduz province, killing five soldiers and wounding two others, said Esmatullah Muradi, the provincial governor’s spokesman.

Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry claims 10 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting.

On the same day, radio journalist Elyas Dayee was killed in the southern Afghan province of Helmand in a targeted bomb blast, officials said.

Dayee was the second journalist to be killed in less than a week in what Human Rights Watch decried as an alarming pattern of “increased threats and attacks on the media by the Taliban”. However, no one claimed responsibility for the attack.

Violence and chaos have increased in the country in recent months despite repeated meetings in Qatar between government negotiators and the Taliban aimed at finding an end to decades of relentless war in Afghanistan. The two sides have made little progress.

Addressing the Herat Security Dialogue on Friday, the government’s head of peace negotiations, Abdullah Abdullah, pointed at the lack of progress in the negotiations and condemned the use of violence by the Taliban.