Two Taliban suicide bombers killed three members of Afghan security forces today, but a third attack in Kabul’s diplomatic enclave was foiled when police shot dead the would-be assailant, officials said.
The attacker in Kabul was armed with a suicide vest and his SUV was full of explosives, but the police opened fire when he tried to penetrate deeper into the capital’s diplomatic enclave of Wazir Akbar Khan, the officials said.
In the day’s first attack, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a spy agency facility in the town of Jalalabad, 150 kilometres east of Kabul.
It was followed by a similar attack on a police base in Puli Alam, 70 kilometres south of the capital, officials said. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed claimed responsibility for the attacks in Puli Alam and Jalalabad, but denied that the militant group was involved in the foiled attack in Kabul.
Authorities had earlier said that two would-be suicide bombers were killed in Kabul. But city police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi said only one attacker was involved, dismissing local reports that a second bomber had managed to escape.
“We have intelligence about this. The bomber was shot dead and his car bomb is defused. It’s over now,”Salangi said.
An AFP photographer at the scene saw a young man laying dead in a pool of blood next to his bullet-ridden car on the side of the road near a construction site. The man was shot in the head. The same construction site was overrun by insurgents as part of a coordinated attack in Kabul and several other provinces in April 2012. Fifty one people, 36 of them insurgents, were killed in those attacks.