Bus bomb kills two in Afghan capital: Taliban

Two people were killed and four wounded in separate bomb explosions in the west of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Friday, the Taliban said.

“Two civilians have been killed and three others were wounded” when a bomb exploded on a minibus in the Dasht-e-Barchi district of Kabul, the Taliban’s interior ministry spokesman Sayed Khosti told reporters.

“In another explosion in the same area, one woman was wounded,” he added, specifying that the second blast was also a bomb.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

Dasht-e-Barchi is largely populated by the mostly Shiite Hazara community, who for years has been the target of violence by the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) group.

In November, a similar bomb attack on a minibus in Dasht-e-Barch killed two people and wounded five others. That attack was claimed by ISIS-K.

ISIS-K claimed responsibility for an October 15 suicide bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in Kandahar that killed at least 60 people and injured scores more.

That attack came a week after another deadly mosque blast claimed by the group in northern Kunduz province killed over 60 people.

The Taliban has vowed to crush this rival Sunni extremist group, launching crackdowns against hideouts used by the jihadists, especially in the country’s south and east.

Friday’s bus bomb is the first fatal attack reported by the Taliban for several weeks.

But Kabul has been hit by repeated blasts lately that the Taliban say have been non-fatal.

The Taliban came back to power after a two-decade absence on August 15 when the previous government’s resistance melted amid the final stages of a US military withdrawal from the country.

The Taliban’s first stint in power lasted from 1996 to 2001, before a US invasion, late that year toppled the radical group.