At least nine killed and 20 injured in an attack on a legislator in Kabul

At least nine people were killed and 20 others injured in an alleged attack on a member of parliament in Kabul, a further targeted attack on important actors in Afghan society in the midst of peace talks.

An explosion in district five of the Afghan capital hit at least three vehicles, including the car carrying legislator Khan Mohammad Wardak, who is among the injured.

"Today, the terrorists carried out a terrorist attack in the PD5 of the city of Kabul. Children, women and old people are among the wounded. Houses in the area have been badly damaged.

Unfortunately, eight of our compatriots were killed and 15 more were injured, including Khan Mohammad Wardak, Member of Parliament. The number of victims could change," Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said in a statement.

In a separate statement issued late in the afternoon, the Interior Ministry raised the total number of dead and injured to nine and twenty. The cause of the explosion is not yet known. No armed group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a Twitter message that "the explosion in Kabul is not related to the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate (as the Taliban call themselves)".

This is the latest in a series of targeted killings in the country against prominent civil society figures. Attacks on politicians, journalists, religious people, human rights defenders and students have been on the rise for a year, first coinciding with the agreement signed in February between the United States and the Taliban, and since September with the insurgents' direct dialogue with the Kabul government in Doha.

The deputy governor of Kabul, Mohibullah Mohammadi, and his assistant were killed last Tuesday in a bomb attack attached to their vehicle in the Afghan capital. According to the spokesman for the Interior, "the enemies of the Afghan people have carried out 37 suicide attacks and 510 landmines in the last three months", in these attacks some 500 civilians have been killed and over a thousand injured.

A dozen diplomatic missions in Afghanistan, including those of the European Union, the United States and NATO, condemned this wave of assassinations last week in a joint communiqué that seeks to silence the diversity of opinions in the country.