Kabul: A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed four people and wounded more than 35 near the Afghan parliament on Wednesday, officials said, the third bomb attack in the capital Kabul in less than a month.
Violence is at its worst since US-backed Afghan forces overthrew the hardline Islamist Taliban in 2001 after it refused to hand over Al Qaida militants, including Osama bin Laden, following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
But attacks in the Afghan capital had been relatively rare in the past year, particularly since a "ring of steel" was erected in the city before a parliamentary election in September.
The suicide bomber on Wednesday targeted a minibus carrying Afghan intelligence personnel in a western district of the city near to the country's parliament building, said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's crime investigation unit.
"Some of the wounded are in critical condition and the death toll may rise," Zahir told Reuters.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location that the militant group had carried out the attack.