Kabul: A suicide bomber blew himself up near a NATO base in Kabul’s diplomatic district on Wednesday, hitting a military vehicle and killing two people, police and a military spokesman said.
“It appears that an ISAF vehicle was damaged as a result of the attack,” a spokesman for the US-led International Security Assistance Force told AFP.
“There is no indication of ISAF casualties. All ISAF bases in the green zone are secure.”
An AFP photographer saw three bodies, including that of the bomber, near Camp Eggers, a major NATO military base in the zone.
The blast was heard across the capital’s diplomatic district, prompting the US embassy to sound its “duck and cover” alarm.
“It was a suicide attack. Two people were killed — one was a security guard the other was a civilian. Another person was wounded,” interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told AFP.
Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi said the bomber, who was wearing a security guard’s uniform and was carrying an automatic rifle and grenades, was shot at but managed to detonate his explosives.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suicide attacks are a trademark of Taliban Islamists waging an increasingly bloody insurgency against the government of President Hamid Karzai, which is backed by more than 100,000 NATO troops.
While the fighting is concentrated in the south and east of the country, Kabul has been hit by a series of deadly suicide and commando-style insurgent attacks this year.
Among the major attacks, explosions and gunfire rocked the city on April 15 as squads of Taliban suicide attackers struck across Afghanistan. At least 51 people were killed in the attacks, 36 of them insurgents.
On June 22, Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and rockets attacked a hotel near Kabul, seizing dozens of hostages and killing at least 18 people.
On September 18, a suicide car bomber killed 12 people, including eight South Africans, on a highway leading to the airport.
On September 8, a teenage suicide bomber struck outside NATO headquarters in Kabul, killing six people, including child hawkers, as Afghanistan marked a public holiday.
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