KABUL: Afghan forces seized a car packed with 300 kilograms of explosives as it drove towards Kabul on Monday, less than two days after police foiled a massive truck bomb in the capital.

Two Taliban suicide attackers were detained by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence agency in Surobi district about 50 kilometres east of the city, the directorate said in a statement.

The white Corolla was travelling from the eastern province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, towards Kabul city when it was stopped. Authorities do not know the attackers’ intended target.

However, the Taliban leadership recently “decided to conduct a series of complex and bloody attacks on predetermined targets including military installations, convoys of security forces and crowded areas of Kabul city”, the NDS said.

The latest incident comes as Kabul remains on high alert after police on Saturday night stopped a lorry carrying 2,700 kg of explosives hidden under boxes of tomatoes, averting a potentially deadly blast.

Police shot and wounded the driver of the vehicle, carrying 30 plastic drums filled with explosive material and two Soviet-era bombs weighing 100kg each, after he failed to stop at a security checkpoint, the interior ministry said.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2017