AN ISLAMIC State (Isis) suicide bomber targeted members of Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic group today, killing nine people and wounding 18 when he blew himself up at a police checkpoint near a gathering of the minority Shi’ites in western Kabul.

The blast followed an overnight assault in northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban hit an army outpost in an hours-long gun battle and ambushed police officers sent to help the troops, killing six soldiers and 10 members of the local police.

Kabul has recently seen a spate of large-scale militant attacks by the Taliban and Isis. Near the end of January, a Taliban terrorist drove an ambulance filled with explosives into the heart of the city, killing at least 103 people and wounding as many as 235.