Afghan residents look on as they sit in front of their damaged houses near the site of a suicide vehicle bomb attack at a French restaurant- Le Jardin in Kabul on January 2, 2016.
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During a search of the surrounding areas, one suspect was arrested, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The attack came one week after another suicide attack carried out by the Taliban in which six U.S. soldiers were killed and two others along with an Afghan were wounded near Bagram Airfield, just north of Kabul.
The Taliban attacked a restaurant popular with expats, the Taverna du Liban, in January 2014, killing 21 people, including 13 foreigners.
The Afghan army launched a special operation in the country’s Helmand province and set free 59 people from a Taliban prison, sources said on Saturday.
The same official said the blast was apparently caused by a auto bomb.
“The blast went off near French restaurant Le Jardin, frequented by foreigners in Qala-e-Fatullah Khan locality…” witness Ahmad Soulaiman told Xinhua.
He said he thought maybe one of the “guesthouses in the area belonging to the foreigners” was the target.
Prospects of success have been clouded by bloody infighting in the Taliban over the leadership succession which has made it hard to identify which parts of the movement may be open to talks and which remain committed to the insurgency.
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But despite the growing bonhomie with Islamabad, analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has said the Taliban must reject terrorism to join the talks, while the Taliban has refused to participate until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
