An explosives-filled car blew up yesterday outside the offices of the Kabul police headquarters and city governor, killing at least five people and wounding several more, officials said.
The extremist Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was aimed at the city police.
The car bomb tore through a busy part of the city outside a compound that includes the governor's office, courts and the main office for police.
"Five civilians have been killed and two police have been wounded. Some civilians have been wounded too," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
The government ambulance service said however one of two dead bodies it evacuated was that of a policeman. Seven wounded people were also evacuated, said the regional coordinator of the Kabul Ambulance Service, Badrt-Rija Badar.
The interior ministry said the bombing was "unprecedented" and appeared to be a new "terrorist tactic."
A remote-controlled bomb exploded near the main jail a few hours later but only caused minor damage to an army vehicle, the defense ministry said. It was unclear who was responsible for that blast.
Afghanistan has been gripped by a wave of violence that has grown in the past two years and is largely attributed to the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.
"Using such tactics, the enemies wanted to inflict maximum casualty," the interior ministry said in a statement. "Fortunately they failed because there were not many people around at the time."
A man running a furniture shop opposite the site of the explosion said there was a small bang followed by two huge ones.
"I saw one person dead," said the man, Abdul Ahmad. "The police arrived and sealed the area off."
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, confirmed his group had carried out the car bombing, which he said was aimed at the Kabul police headquarters.
He said it was not a suicide bombing -- a favored Taliban tactic of which there have been more than 140 this year, the worst killing nearly 80 people last month.
Kabul has suffered a rash of attacks in recent weeks. The last was on Dec. 5 when a Taliban suicide attacker slammed a bomb-filled car into an Afghan army bus in the city, killing at least 13 people.
That attack came during a visit by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has called for more international support for Afghanistan's fight against insurgents.
There are about 60,000 international troops in Afghanistan, helping the fragile country establish control over the rugged land fractured after decades of war.
International soldiers helped Afghan forces one week ago to take back the southern town of Musa Qala, which had become perhaps the main rebel base in the country.
The Afghan army found and destroyed caches of explosives, weapons and waistcoats to be used in suicide bombings during a clean-up of the town, the defense ministry said yesterday.
They also found communications equipment, two bomb-making factories and a stockpile of drugs, it said.
Musa Qala is in Helmand Province, the main source of Afghanistan's world-leading production of opium, which is used to make heroin, which is said to finance the insurgency.
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