Taliban insurgents have ambushed a convoy of Afghan security forces in a mountainous northern region of Afghanistan, killing 22 soldiers and police, an official said, as bombs in the capital Kabul and elsewhere left three people dead.
The violence came as the Taliban and their allies step up attacks before the withdrawal of most foreign troops at the end of the year. The insurgency is seeking to weaken the new Afghan government that will take over most of the fight.
The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, attacked the convoy as it travelled through Laghman valley in Sar-e-Pul province, the governor, Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, said.
Eight security forces were wounded and seven were taken captive. “Twelve army and police vehicles are totally destroyed,” he added.
A suicide car bomber rammed a Nato military convoy along a road out of Kabul early on Monday, killing one Afghan civilian, the authorities said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Jalalabad Road, a main thoroughfare with a US military base and a housing compound for UN and other international contractors and aid workers.
At least three foreign nationals were wounded in the blast targeting their armoured vehicles. Their identities have not been confirmed.
A spokesman for the US-led Nato mission in Afghanistan said a patrol was attacked but there were no fatalities among the international force. The force does not confirm injuries.
The bomber drove a Toyota Corolla into the convoy just before 7am local time, said Farid Afzali, head of Kabul’s police investigation department. “As a result of the blast, one of our countrymen was killed and three foreigners slightly wounded,” he added.
It was the second car bomb attack on international forces in Kabul in a month.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Majahid, tweeted that the target was a foreign military convoy and several troops were killed. The insurgents, who are fighting to expel foreign forces and re-establish their Islamist state, often exaggerate the results of their attacks.
In the eastern province of Nangarhar, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in front of a clinic, killing two people and wounding seven, the Ministry of Defence said.
A bomb planted in a crowded market in the Qarabagh district of Kabul wounded 22 civilians, five of whom are in critical condition. Four children were reportedly among the injured.
The Taliban took advantage of weeks of political paralysis following the disputed presidential election to regain territory in provinces such as Helmand in the south and Kunduz in the north.
President Ashraf Ghani appealed in his inauguration address last month for the militants to join peace talks but they denounced his government for signing a security pact with Washington, calling it a “sinister” US plot to control Afghanistan
