A Taliban truck bomb and gun attack killed eight people in the Afghan capital Kabul today, destroying the entrance to a NATO supply company's compound in the latest insurgent assault to shake peace efforts.
Four Nepalese and one Romanian were among those killed in the bombing, which came after a series of recent Taliban suicide attacks targeting the Supreme Court, the airport, the presidency and a CIA office.
The US has been pushing for peace talks as 100,000 NATO combat troops prepare to leave Afghanistan next year and local security forces take on the fight against the Islamist extremists.
"Four Nepalese guards, one Afghan guard and two Afghan civilians have been killed," Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi told AFP after the attack, which started at about midnight GMT.
A Romanian male civilian contractor was also killed and another wounded in the attack, Adrian Kozjacski, the head of the Romanian diplomatic mission in Afghanistan told AFP.
An AFP photographer saw one badly shaken guard with bloody face wounds and a bandage wrapped around his head being helped from the site outside the compound of the Dubai-based Supreme Group.
The group provides many NATO bases with food, water, fuel and other supplies, as well as maintaining military storage buildings and accommodation and its compound is close to UN offices and a string of NATO bases.
Salangi said the attack began with a suicide bomb in a large truck, and two or three insurgents then fought guards for about 30-40 minutes. All the attackers were killed.
The bomb left a large crater in the ground, and reduced walls and a guard post to a pile of rubble and twisted steel. Police said some suicide vests were later detonated by security forces.
The Taliban claimed today's attack, as pressure grows on the Afghan government to secure a peace deal with the rebels before international troops pull out by the end of 2014.
"An important foreign logistic and supply facility was attacked, first by an explosive-filled truck which removed all the barriers and followed by devoted mujahideen armed with small and heavy weapons entering the base," the Taliban said in a statement.
