The Kabul-based Italian Emergency Hospital reported at least 15 wounded people had been evacuated to the center.
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A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said police arrested one suspect after the bombing, according to the Washington Post.
Pakistani and Afghan top military officials established a “Hot Line” and talked for the first time on Wednesday, amid renewed efforts to increase security cooperation, the Pakistani military said. On Monday, a auto bomb killed one person near the Kabul airport. Many expats became more circumspect in their movements after 21 people were massacred at a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul in January 2014.
In December, insurgents killed six people, including two Spanish police officers, when they stormed a guesthouse attached to the Spanish embassy in Kabul.
Officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China are due to meet in Pakistan on January 11 for a meeting aimed at laying the ground for talks with the insurgents.
Friday’s attack was not the first to target a Western-style establishment.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the suicide attack against the French restaurant.
WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images Security personnel and bystanders look on as flames and smoke rise at the site of a suicide vehicle bomb attack at a French restaurant on Friday.
Of course, there are no active peace negotiations in Afghanistan at any rate, with the Taliban withdrawing after the death of their founder Mullah Omar.
Afghanistan is still gripped by insecurity 14 years after the U.S. and its allies attacked the country as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.
But despite the growing bonhomie with Islamabad, analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off.
“I was talking on the phone when I heard a loud explosion that lit up the whole neighborhood”, said Masoom Ali Hazara, who lives down the street.
Meanwhile, the Afghan government is pushing for peace talks with the Taliban militant group, which made surprising gains in 2015.
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The operation to free the prisoners followed months of fighting in which the Taliban has seized several district centres in Helmand, a major centre of opium cultivation and one of its traditional strongholds.
