Car blast in Kabul hits near airport leaving 7 dead

At least seven people killed and other seven are injured when a car bomb detonated at Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul.

According to interior ministry spokesman, the bomb had gone off in a neighborhood which is near the interior ministry and north of Kabul airport.

The blast was detonated by a suicide bomber in the car, and that it had targeted a convoy of government vehicles on a main road, sources said.

The blast also damaged several vehicles, the bodies and the injured are shifted to hospital where they are being provided medical assistance.

The blast came one day after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced that Kabul would release three high-ranking Taliban prisoners in an apparent prisoner swap with Western hostages who were kidnapped by the insurgents in 2016.

The three Taliban prisoners include Anas Haqqani, who was seized in 2014 and whose older brother is the deputy Taliban leader and head of the Haqqani network, a notorious Taliban affiliate.

Ashraf Ghani did not specify the fate of the Western hostages — an Australian and an American, both professors at the American University in Kabul — and it was not clear when or where they would be freed.