Pakistan has condemned a vehicle suicide bombing in the Afghan capital of Kabul that killed at least 12 people, including three U.S. contractors, and injured over 60 others.
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Police said it was a suicide attack on a foreign military convoy which was travelling through the area, reports BBC.
A six-story office building across the street from the blast had all of its windows broken, with many inside wounded from broken glass. Their targets have included overseas army and civilian convoys.
Meanwhile, Najib Danish, a deputy Interior Ministry spokesman, said the attack destroyed more than a dozen of civilian vehicles.
“The United States remains committed to assisting our Afghan partners in their efforts to ensure a peaceful future”, it said in a statement. “This government is nothing but a total failure”, Arif said. Two Afghan women nearby also were killed.
The violence has strained ties with neighbour Pakistan, with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accusing the government there of not doing enough to stop militants planning attacks from training camps he says lie across the border.
Those reactions echoed expressions of anger when three major bombings took place in a 24-hour period two weeks ago in Kabul, killing scores.
In a statement the Taliban denied it was behind the attack.
But the Taliban, who often don’t claim attacks that have a high number of civilian causalities, have launched a series of attacks in Kabul in recent weeks following the announcement of the death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The Afghan Taliban have been claiming responsibility for every single attack on Afghan or worldwide forces as well as governmental institutions in the past 13 years.
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The loud explosion prompted the heavily-fortified US embassy, located a few kilometres away in the centre of Kabul, to sound its emergency sirens and a “duck and cover” alarm warning. Some analysts say the insurgents are trying to show they remain potent.
