KABUL: At least nine people were killed when a military helicopter was shot down in central Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghani said on Thursday.

The ministry of defence said earlier the aircraft had crashed in a volatile district of Wardak province, where Afghan forces and local militias have fought bitterly in recent years.

“Our helicopter was shot down... and our brave pilots were martyred,” Ghani said at a ceremony at the presidential palace.

He did not say who was responsible, but warned “the perpetrators of the incident will be seriously punished”.

The defence ministry said four crew and five security force members were killed.

Helicopter crashes are common in Afghanistan either due to technical problems or militant attacks.

In October last year, nine members of the Afghan military were killed when two army helicopters collided while transporting wounded soldiers in southern Helmand province.

The Afghan government has been battling a surge in violence across the country blamed on the Taliban, despite peace talks launched between the two sides last year.

In a statement, it said that four crew members of the MI-17 helicopter along with five security personnel were killed in the crash, in the Behsud district of Maidan Wradak province.

Separately on Thursday, a bombing killed four state employees commuting in a minibus in the capital Kabul, police said.

Ferdaws Faramarz, spokesman for the Kabul police chief, said a woman was among the dead and nine other people were wounded in the attack in the city’s north.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack, but government employees have been targeted before.

On Monday, another bombing on a minibus carrying state workers in Kabul killed three women and a 3-year-old child, and wounded 13 others, according to security officials.

Afghanistan is experiencing a nationwide spike in bombings, targeted killings and other violence as peace negotiations in Qatar between Taliban insurgents and the Afghan government stall.

The militant Islamic State groups local affiliate has claimed responsibility for some of the violence, but many attacks go unclaimed, with the Afghan government putting the blame on the Taliban. The insurgents have denied responsibility for most of the attacks.

The attack in Kabul comes on the same day Russia hosts the first of three international conferences aimed at jump-starting the peace process, ahead of a May 1 deadline for the final withdrawal of US and Nato troops from the country.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2021