At least three people were killed on Wednesday by gunmen who attacked a checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan, a Taliban official confirmed.

While the Taliban official said all the deceased the civilians, witnesses and a security source told AFP that two of the casualties were Taliban fighters. The latter added that the attack was carried out by unidentified gunmen in a rickshaw and targeted a checkpoint in Ghawchak district of Jalalabad.

The attack in Jalalabad city is the latest on Taliban targets in Nangarhar province, which for years was the main operating base of the Islamic State (IS) group's Afghanistan chapter.

In another incident, local residents told AFP that two Taliban fighters were injured while trying to defuse an improvised explosive device in Jalalabad.

Further details were not immediately available.

Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the local branch of the militant Islamic State group, claimed responsibility for several weekend attacks in Jalalabad that killed at least two people.

They were the first deadly blasts since the last US forces withdrew from Afghanistan on August 30.

IS-K also claimed responsibility for a bloody attack that killed more than 150 people at Kabul airport at the end of August.