Two people were killed in a blast targeting workers for an Afghan television station and at least seven police officers died in an insider attack by Taliban loyalists on Sunday as US and Taliban negotiators met for renewed peace talks in Doha.
The deadly incidents came amid surging violence across Afghanistan even while Washington is negotiating with the Taliban to turn the page on its longest ever war.
The first attack occurred when a "sticky bomb" – a type of homemade device often attached to vehicles with magnets – went off in a bustling area of the capital, Kabul, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said.
A "bus carrying the employees of Khurshid TV exploded in the Taimani area", he said, referring to a busy neighbourhood in central Kabul.
"Two bypassers killed, and four others, including three employees of Khurshid TV injured," he added.
Zabiullah Doorandish, a journalist with Khurshid TV, said three of his colleagues had been injured, including one journalist.
"We had received a warning recently by the [security services] that the Taliban may target us," he told AFP.
But it was the Islamic State (IS) group's Khorasan Province branch, in a statement, which claimed responsibility for the attack on media personnel "loyal to the apostate Afghan government", according to US-based monitor SITE Intelligence Group.
The statement claimed 22 media workers were killed or wounded.
Peace talks
Stopping IS group militants from using Afghanistan as a haven is one of the objective of peace talks between the United States and the Taliban, which continued over the weekend in Doha, Qatar.
The US, which invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban in 2001, wants to withdraw thousands of troops after almost two decades of a conflict that has killed more than 2,300 of its personnel.
The talks, now in their eighth round, began on Saturday but it was unclear if they would extend into a third day, with neither side commenting on progress by late Sunday.
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Taliban sources said efforts had been made to organise a direct meeting between US envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar, who heads the movement's political wing.
Washington is hoping to strike a peace deal with the Taliban by September 1 – ahead of Afghan polls due the same month, and US presidential elections due in 2020.
US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that "we've made a lot of progress. We're talking".
In a possible sign of progress, the Afghan government has formed a negotiating team for separate peace talks with the Taliban that diplomats hope could be held as early as later this month.
Insider attacks
But in a bloody reminder of the Taliban’s continuing threat, seven Afghan policemen were killed by one or more rogue officers on Sunday in the southern province of Kandahar, in an attack claimed by the insurgent group.
Jamal Naser Barekzai, spokesman for Kandahar's provincial police chief, said the attack occurred at a police checkpoint. There were conflicting reports about the number of assailants.
The killings were the latest case of so-called "insider attacks", when an Afghan policeman or soldier turns his weapon on Afghan forces or international troops.
On July 29, an Afghan soldier killed two US troops as they were visiting an Afghan army base in Kandahar.
That came two weeks after another Afghan soldier shot and killed an influential Afghan army colonel while he was conducting a security assessment in Ghazni province.
Civilian casualty rates across Afghanistan jumped back to record levels last month, following a dip earlier in the year, the UN said Saturday.
Agence France Presse
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