More than 40 wounded in Kabul car bomb attack

Kabul: A car bomb exploded near a foreign compound in the east of Kabul on Monday, wounding more than 40 people, officials said, in the latest attack to rock the Afghan capital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said the blast had targeted Green Village, where some foreign workers are based.

Health ministry spokesman Wahidullah Mayar said on Twitter that "more than 40 people are wounded".

Until recently some UN staff lived and worked at the compound, but Danish said the area was now largely empty and "only a number of guards" were left.

"Residential houses nearby have sustained heavy damages," Danish said.

"Special police forces' units have been deployed to the site to check if there are more attackers." The latest attack comes as US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad visits the region for meetings aimed at bringing an end to the war in Afghanistan, which by some estimates was the world's deadliest conflict zone in 2018.

Earlier, India and five Central Asian countries along with Afghanistan on Sunday condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and agreed to cooperate in countering the menace which poses a threat to people across the world.

This was part of a joint statement issued at the end of the first ever meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue which also saw the participation of Afghanistan at the ministerial level in Samarkand.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj along with the foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan took part in the meeting.

"All sides condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and agreed to cooperate in countering terrorism which posed a threat to the people and economies of the world," the statement said.

It referred to the ancient civilisational, cultural, trade, and people-to-people links between India and Central Asia and expressed commitment to dynamic and fruitful friendly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation between India and the Central Asian countries at bilateral and multilateral formats.