Blasts in Kabul hit near ceremony attended by top officials

Mortar shells exploded Thursday outside a ceremony in the Afghan capital Kabul attended by the country's chief executive and a former president. Both men were unharmed, but three others were killed, a government official said.

Nusrat Rahimi, deputy spokesperson for the interior ministry, said 31 people were wounded in the attack launched from a house near the ceremony. Security forces battled for several hours with militants holed up in the house, Rahimi said, and two insurgents were eventually killed and one person arrested. 

Later, the group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.

The ceremony was commemorating the 1995 death of prominent minority Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari, who was killed by the Taliban. Afghanistan's chief executive Abdullah Abdullah and former president Hamid Karzai attended the gathering.

Presidential candidate and former Afghan national security adviser Hanif Atmar tweeted that eight of his personal guards were wounded and called the attack "horrid and unforgiveable." Another presidential candidate, Latif Pedram, was injured. The extent of his injuries was not immediately known.

Hundreds of people were at the ceremony in a large hall on the western edge of Kabul in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood, said Azizullah Amini, who attended the event.

Amini told The Associated Press he heard at least four explosions and the hall shook as if something was slamming into the ground outside the building. The ceremony quickly ended as people were rattled by the blasts.

ISIS has often targeted the ethnic Hazaras, a mainly Shia Muslim minority in Sunni majority Afghanistan. ISIS has declared war on Shias, considering them heretics and attacking their mosques and educational institutions.

The militant group has often struck in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood, where Hazaras dominate. The Taliban, by contrast, has distanced itself from attacks on Shias in Afghanistan.

Construction company under attack

Meanwhile, ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack Wednesday on a construction company in eastern Nangarhar province that killed at least 17 people and triggered an hours-long gunbattle with Afghan forces, assisted by U.S. troops. The militant group on an affiliated website posted photographs of the two suicide bombers, both Afghan nationals.

The dawn assault started with a suicide bombing outside the gates of a construction company by the airport in Jalalabad, the provincial capital. Afghan officials said all five insurgents were killed, including two suicide bombers.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Taliban waged a blistering four-hour battle with security forces on Wednesday night in northern Kunduz province, in the Qalay Zul district, killing seven policemen, according to Mohammad Yosuf Ayubi, chairman of the provincial council. Ayubi said 90 per cent of the district is now in Taliban hands.

And early on Thursday, the Taliban killed four Afghan border patrol officers in western Herat province, near the border with Iran, said Gelani Farhad, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Attacks have continued in Afghanistan despite stepped-up U.S. efforts to find a negotiated resolution of the 17-year war, America's longest.

U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is holding talks with the Taliban in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where the insurgents have a political office. The latest round of talks is in its second week, which has raised expectations of some progress.