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Explosion in Kabul kills four people, Taliban claim credit

The blast follows Sunday's suicide bombing at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport and last week's Taliban assault on the city's Park Palace Guest House hotel, which resulted in over a dozen deaths.

By Fred Lambert
Afghan Health Ministry workers run during firing between militants and Afghan security forces in Kabul, Afghanistan on September 13, 2011, after Taliban insurgents coordinated attacks on the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other buildings in the capital's downtown, killing seven Afghans. Taliban forces claimed a suicide bombing near the Ministry of Justice in Kabul on May 19, 2015, that killed four people. File photo by Enayat Asadi/UPI
Afghan Health Ministry workers run during firing between militants and Afghan security forces in Kabul, Afghanistan on September 13, 2011, after Taliban insurgents coordinated attacks on the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other buildings in the capital's downtown, killing seven Afghans. Taliban forces claimed a suicide bombing near the Ministry of Justice in Kabul on May 19, 2015, that killed four people. File photo by Enayat Asadi/UPI | License Photo

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 19 (UPI) -- The Taliban claimed credit for an explosion on Tuesday that killed four people near several government buildings in Kabul, according to reports.

The explosion occurred in the center of the capital, in the vicinity of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Afghanistan, the Serena Hotel and a road leading to the presidential palace.

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Officials said a car laden with explosives detonated as government employees left work -- the third time Ministry of Justice workers were targeted in the last two weeks, including in an early May attack on a shuttle bus carrying workers with the attorney general's office, the BBC reports.

On Sunday a suicide bombing at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport wounded 18 people and killed three, including a British citizen and two Afghan teenage girls. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack, which targeted a training vehicle belonging to the E.U. Police Mission, a civilian operation trying to develop Afghanistan's police force.

Last week, Taliban gunmen assaulted the city's Park Palace Guest House hotel, killing at least 14 people, including one U.S. citizen and foreign nationals from India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Italy.

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Tuesday's incident joins a growing list of such attacks in Kabul over the last year.

According to U.S. and Afghan officials, about 330 Afghan soldiers and police are killed or wounded each week in Taliban attacks, and the level of casualties among those forces in the first 15 weeks of 2015 is 70 percent higher than it was during the same period last year.

The spike comes as coalition forces gradually withdraw from the country.

After U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011, coalition forces officially handed the security operation to Afghan forces in December 2014.

The president's original timetable called for a reduction of U.S. troops in the country to 5,500 by the end of 2015, but in late March Obama announced the U.S. force would maintain its current posture of nearly 10,000 troops, used for advising and assisting Afghan forces, until the end of the year.

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