Move FM Global News

KABUL, Afghanistan – A powerful car bomb has exploded in central Kabul on Sunday night, leaving 6 people injured.

Meantime the Taliban has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s suicide car bombing of an administrative compound that left four Afghan police officers dead, and 17 injured.

The attack which took place in Afghanistan’s central Ghazni province early on Saturday morning followed a number of suicide car bombings in the capital Kabul in recent days.

It also came two days after Afghanistan and the United States agreed to step up efforts to negotiate a peaceful end to the war in Afghanistan.

Talks with the Taliban have been underway for some time.

U.S. President Donald Trump voiced frustration with the war in a joint press conference with visiting Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday. “We’re like policemen,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win it in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”

“I have a plan to win that war in a very short period of time” he said, before turning towards the Pakistani prime minister and saying, “You understand that better than anybody.”

Following a query from Kabul about the statement, particularly the threat to kill 10 million people in a week, which would imply a nuclear attack, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo phoned the Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani.

Pompeo and Ghani later issued a joint statement calling for negotiations for a ceasefire to be stepped up.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Washington’s special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has been sent to Kabul to “discuss in detail the next steps on the road to peace,” the statement said.

(File photo).