Salim Saleh, spokesman for the provincial governor in Logar, said eight others were wounded in the attack which took place in Puli Alim, the capital of the province.
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Last week, a Taliban suicide bomber struck a police base in central Kabul Monday, killing 20 Afghan police officers and injuring at least 32 others, according to a statement from the global military coalition in Afghanistan. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
In Kunar province, on the border with Pakistan, the bodies of three health workers involved in vaccinating Afghan children against polio were found late Saturday, nearly two weeks after they went missing in Ghaziabad district, the governor’s spokesman Abdul Ghani Musamim, said.
The stricken minibus carrying the army members was running near army Corps 209 Shaheen before the bomber detonated his explosive jacket close to the vehicle, the source added.
The incident in Balkh province comes as the militant group steps up attacks across the country in the fifteenth year of its insurgency against the Western-backed government in Kabul. The 2001 attack overthrew the Taliban, but many areas across Afghanistan still face violence and insecurity.
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Officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China have been trying to lay the groundwork for talks with the Taliban, which have made gains since the withdrawal of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops from Afghanistan in 2014.
