Two Taliban suicide bombers blew themselves up at the entrance of a guesthouse occupied by a Western security company in central Kabul on Tuesday, killing two drivers, police and witnesses said.
"There were two suicide bombers who detonated themselves at the entrance. Two drivers were killed and a security guard was injured," Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, the head of police criminal investigations, told reporters.
Sayedzada said the two civilians killed were drivers, and that the guesthouse was used by international security contractors Hart.
A senior representative of the London-based company told AFP: "There was an incident in the vicinity of the Hart villa. We have reports on a number of locals injured. That's all we know".
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary confirmed there had been a suicide attack in the Taimani district north of Kabul.
Shopkeeper Ghulam Mustafa told AFP he heard gunshots for a few minutes and later a "big explosion".
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a joint suicide and gun attack.
An AFP reporter saw three bodies, one of them riddled with bullets, near the single-storey guesthouse that local residents said was run by foreigners.
A car could be seen at the guesthouse entrance, where the gates had been blown away.
Insurgents have increasingly targeted guesthouses in the capital, which is heavily fortified with a "ring of steel" in place to secure the city perimeter.
The last suicide attack was on July 18 when a bomber on a bicycle struck a bustling street, killing three people two days ahead of an international conference in Kabul attended by major foreign donors.
In the insurgent south of Afghanistan, six police officers were killed in two attacks, police said Tuesday.
Nearly 150,000 US-led coalition forces are in Afghanistan fighting a nearly nine-year Taliban-led insurgency that is as its most fierce in the militants' southern heartlands of Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
Copyright 2010 AFP South Asian Edition
