"Four dead" as Taliban attack Afghan army base

A suicide bombing at the Afghan army headquarters in the country's east killed four people and wounded eight, according to officials, in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

"Four dead bodies and eight wounded were brought to our hospital," said Baz Mohammad Shairzad, head of the provincial hospital, on Saturday.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP.

The attacker detonated his explosives at the base in the Gambiri area near Jalalabad city, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, said Mohammad Nooman Hatifi, the Afghan army spokesman for eastern Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Major Tim James, said there had been "a number of both Afghan and ISAF casualties" in the attack but could not yet give further details.

He added that there were over 100 ISAF troops at the base in Laghman province, primarily tasked with mentoring the Afghan army.

The defence ministry in Kabul confirmed there had been a suicide attack at the base but did not give further details. The area has now been cordoned off.

The blast came a day after the provincial police chief of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, Khan Mohammad Mujahid, was killed in a suicide bombing claimed by the Taliban which also killed his two bodyguards.

There has been a recent spike in suicide bombings -- a key Taliban tactic -- in Afghanistan, with authorities reporting nine in the last few days.

About 130,000 international troops are stationed in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them from the United States, battling the Taliban and other insurgents.

Limited withdrawals from seven relatively peaceful areas of the country are due to start in July ahead of the planned end of foreign combat operations in 2014.

Afghan security forces are due to take increasing responsibility for their own country's security as foreign troops pull back.

They are frequently the target of attacks by the Taliban, who have been fighting an insurgency since 2001 when a US-led invasion ousted them from power.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned at a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Berlin on Thursday that nations involved in Afghanistan should not rush to exit due to "political expediency and short-term thinking".

"We have to steel ourselves and our publics for the possibility that the Taliban will resort to the most destructive and sensational attacks we have seen," she said.