At least nine killed and 14 injured in Kabul attack intended to mar US defence secretary Chuck Hagel's first visit to country
A Taliban suicide bomber has killed at least nine people in an attack on the ministry of defence in Kabul intended to mar the US defence secretary's first visit to Afghanistan.
Claiming responsibility for the attack, the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said its aim was to prevent Chuck Hagel from using his visit to "say the Taliban are weak, and announce fake achievements [of coalition forces]".
Another 14 people were injured when the bomber, who was riding a bicycle, struck on a crowded stretch of road outside the main gate of the ministry just before 9am. Hours later a second suicide bomber killed eight children and a policeman who tried to intercept him, on a road in eastern Khost province, a stronghold of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network.
Hagel was in a briefing at a US military base at the time of the Kabul explosion. He later continued with a scheduled trip to the Bagram airbase, which lies north of the capital and is a hub for US forces.
Most of the casualties in Kabul were people visiting the ministry, the deputy defence spokesman Daulat Waziri said. Two officers were among those wounded but all the dead appear to have been civilians.
The attack came shortly after the last-minute cancellation of a ceremony planned for the morning to mark the transfer of the last Afghan prisoners held by the US military into Afghan custody.
US detention of Afghan citizens has been a recurrent source of tension in relations between Washington and Kabul, with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, denouncing it as a violation of his country's sovereignty and US officials countering with concerns about security.
Last year the two countries reached a deal for the complete handover of the Bagram prison, and all Afghans held there, within six months, but the US continued to hold a small group of prisoners past the agreed deadline of September. Many prisoners were detained on the grounds of classified intelligence that US officials have said cannot be presented in court, and Washington has been seeking agreement that Kabul will continue with a system of it what it calls "administrative detention" for some of the prisoners.
The cancellation of the ceremony came after Karzai told the opening of parliament on Wednesday that he would release some of the prisoners. A spokesman for US forces declined to comment on the reason the transfer had been called off.
"We continue to work out the details on the transfer of the detention facility in Parwan … We remain committed to the full transfer of the facility and all Afghan detainees to the government of Afghanistan," spokesman Thomas Collins said. "We intend to proceed with the transfer once we have reached full agreement."
• Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri