Suicide bomb attack kills two in Kabul

A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed at least two Afghan security personnel and wounded four in an attack near the country's parliament in Kabul on Wednesday, an Afghan government official said.

The attack in the Afghan capital targeted a minibus carrying Afghan security forces, said Ministry of Interior spokesman Zemari Bashary. He did not give more details.

Violence is at its worst in a near-decade long war against a Taliban-led insurgency.

But attacks in the Afghan capital have been relatively rare in the past year, particularly since a "ring of steel" was erected around the city before a parliamentary election in September.

Last month, two militants wearing suicide vests attacked a bus of Afghan army officers in Kabul, killing five and wounding nine. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that assault, the first major attack in the Afghan capital since May, when six foreign troops were killed by a large suicide car bomb.

Last week, a bomb place in a bag in downtown Kabul killed a policeman and wounded two civilians.

The Taliban is at its strongest since U.S.-backed Afghan forces ousted the Islamist government in 2001.

The insurgency has spread out of its traditional strongholds in the south and east over the past two years into once peaceful areas of the north and west. The north in particular has become a deadly new front in the war.

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