Suicide car bombing rocks Kabul: Interior ministry

KABUL, Afghanistan

A late night massive suicide car bombing rocked the Afghan capital Kabul, Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday.

The Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi said the suicide car bombing took place near the Green-Village area on the main Kabul - Jalalabad highway where a number of international aid agencies and a foreign military compound are located.

The Taliban took responsibility for the attack.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the group's spokesman said in a social media post that multiple of their insurgents stormed the Green-Village area and engaged in clashes with the Afghan and foreign forces.

The local Salam Afghanistan radio reported that more than 50 people got injured, a number of buildings and a fuel station destroyed due to the explosion.

The area has witnessed a number of identical attacks in the past separately claimed either by the Taliban or the Daesh's Afghanistan chapter ISIS-KP.

Minutes before the blast, the top U.S. peace negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad, said the U.S. forces would vacate five military bases in Afghanistan in initial 135 days after signing of the peace deal with Taliban.

This comes days after the Taliban attacked Baghlan and Kunduz provinces in the north, but were repulsed by the special forces of the Afghan army after fierce clashes and two suicide attacks killing all over more than 200 people including over 100 insurgents.

Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani dubbed this assault as a ‘failed attack’ by the Taliban in clear contrast to their leadership’s ongoing peace talks with the U.S. in Qatar.

Kunduz, once the Taliban’s hub in the north, briefly fell twice to the group in 2015 and 2016. The city links many northern provinces to the capital Kabul.

Afghanistan has witnessed a surge in violence ahead of September's presidential elections, which the Taliban insurgents oppose.