Kabul:Â At least two people were killed and 18 others wounded in a suicide attack targeting a foreign convoy near Kabul airport during the peak morning rush hour on Sunday, officials said.
“A suicide bomber detonated his Toyota sedan targeting a foreign forces convoy near Kabul airport on Sunday at 9:00 am,” Kabul police spokesman Ebadullah Karimi told AFP.
“The target of the attacker was the foreign forces convoy. So far we have two women dead, 18 others wounded, all of them civilians,” he said, adding that three children were among those wounded.
Deputy interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said three civilian vehicles, one of them belonging to foreign troops were damaged at the site of the attack.
An AFP photographer at the scene saw troops hauling away the body of a soldier removed from the twisted carcass of a badly damaged sedan.
“All we can say at this moment that two of Eupol’s vehicles were there at the time of the attack. We don’t have any more details yet,” Aziz Basam, senior press officer for the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan, told AFP.
Khalilullah Hodkhil, the deputy head of Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, said he had so far received dead bodies of two young girls and 19 other wounded people.
“All of them are civilians, including women and children,” he told AFP.
“They are under treatment and their wounds are not life-threatening.”
Gul Agha Rohani, the deputy police chief of Kabul, said a number of casualties were expected from the powerful blast.
The attack comes as Afghan forces face their first fighting season against the Taliban without the full support of US-led foreign combat troops.
On Wednesday, 14 people – most of them foreigners – were killed in a Taliban attack on a Kabul guesthouse that trapped dozens attending a concert and triggered an hours-long standoff with Afghan forces.