World

Paris -The surge of populist parties in Italy's election shows the extent to which the country on the frontline of the migrant crisis "feels abandoned by Europe", France's European affairs minister said Monday.

The anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right euro-sceptic League party were the big winners of the election, which laid bare widespread anger over immigration and frustration with mainstream politics.

Italy "is a country that has faced the biggest influx of migrants in its history and has felt alone, abandoned by the European Union," minister Nathalie Loiseau told France Info radio.

"It is striking how this country, a founding member of the European Union, is gripped by disappointment with Europe," she added.

As in France and Germany, which held elections last year, the chief losers of Italy's vote were the traditional, parties of the mainstream left and right.

"It shows that, across Europe, traditional parties are tired," said Loiseau, one of the many first-time ministers in the cabinet of France's Emmanuel Macron, who is himself a relative newcomer to politics.

But she also warned against giving into "doom-mongering", pointing to "good news" in Germany, where the centre-left ratified a coalition deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, ending a long stalemate.

ROME — Italians went to the polls on Sunday in a vote that could bring political gridlock after an election campaign marked by anger over the listless economy, high unemployment and immigration.

Pollsters have predicted that former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right party and his far-right allies will emerge as the largest bloc in parliament, but fall short of a majority.

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement looks set to be the biggest single party, feeding off discontent over entrenched corruption and growing poverty, while the ruling centre-left Democratic Party is seen limping home in third place.

Heavily indebted Italy is the third-largest economy in the 19-member eurozone and, though investors have been sanguine ahead of the ballot, prolonged political stalemate could reawaken the threat of market instability.

“I’d like to see the parties work together more for the good of the country... there was too much mud-slinging during the campaign,” said 20-year-old Luca Hammad while leaving a polling station in Rome. 

“I hope these elections bring change for young people. Even if you find a job, wages are so low that it is hardly worth working.”

In the latest sign of the divisive climate ahead of the vote, some homes in Pavia, near Milan, were marked overnight with stickers that said “Here lives an anti-fascist”.

Neo-fascist movements have been gaining ground in Italy, where a Nazi sympathiser last month injured six Africans in a shooting incident. 

Polling stations close at 23:00pm (22:00 GMT), with exit polls due immediately afterwards. The vote is being held under a complex new electoral law that could mean the final result will not be clear until late on Monday.

Confusion over the new law led to mistakes in 200,000 ballots that had to reprinted overnight in Palermo, where some polling stations delayed opening amid protests from voters. 

The campaign 81-year-old Berlusconi has marked the return to frontline politics of, who was forced to quit as prime minister in 2011 at the height of a sovereign debt crisis and was widely written off after sex scandals, legal woes and ill health.

A 2013 conviction for tax fraud means he can not hold public office and he has put forward Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, as his candidate for prime minister.

Populist power 

Tajani’s moderate profile is aimed at allaying fears in Europe about his populist allies, notably the League, whose leader Matteo Salvini has promised to deport the 600,000 boat migrants who have arrived in Italy over the past four years.

Some pollsters say the League could overtake Berlsuconi’s Forza Italia Party on Sunday.

Populist parties have been on the rise across Europe since the 2008 financial crisis, but mainstream parties in Italy have found it especially hard to contain voter anger, with the economy still 6 per cent smaller than a decade ago and unemployment stuck at about 11 per cent.

The 5-Star Movement, led by 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio, has been particularly successful at tapping into the disaffection in the underdeveloped south and has promised a monthly universal wage of up to 780 euros ($960) for the poor.

“I think 5-Star will win... but I’m also worried that there won’t be a winner. Both scenarios look catastrophic to me,” said Giuseppe Ottaviani, who voted in Amelia, central Italy.

Economists say that, like many party pledges, Italy can ill-afford the universal wage. But many of the more wild campaign promises are likely to fall by the wayside if there is a hung parliament and a power-sharing accord has to be hammered out.

Although all party leaders have ruled out any post-election alliances with rivals, Italy has a long history of finding a way out of apparently intractable political stalemate.

But if, as expected, no one clinches clear victory on Sunday, it might take weeks before a government deal is reached.

PARIS - France’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that Iran’s ballistic missile program was a major concern, a day before foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was due to visit Tehran.

The ministry said it wanted Iran to contribute in a“positive” manner to solving crises in the Middle-East.

“In this regard the crisis in Syria and the humanitarian situation there will particularly be discussed along with other regional issues where Iran is involved (Yemen, Libya, Iraq)”, the ministry added.

OUAGADOUGOU — Dozens of people were killed on Friday in twin attacks on the French embassy in Burkina Faso and the country’s military headquarters, an assault that coincided with a meeting of regional anti-militant forces. 

The apparently coordinated attacks underlined the struggle the fragile West African nation faces in containing a bloody and growing militant insurgency.

The government said the attack on the military was a suicide car bombing and that a planned meeting of the G5 Sahel regional anti-terrorism force may have been the target.

Officials from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger were at the meeting, representing the G5 Sahel nations who have launched a joint military force to combat militants on the southern rim of the Sahara.

Eight members of the armed forces were killed by the blast and the parallel attack on the French embassy, while 80 others were wounded, said Security Minister Clement Sawadogo. The minister said eight attackers had been shot dead.

“The vehicle was packed with explosives” and caused “huge damage”, Sawadogo said, adding that it was a suicide attack.

Three security sources, two in France and one in West Africa, told AFP that at least 28 people were killed in the attack on the military HQ alone.

French government sources said there were no French casualties and described the situation in Ouagadougou as “under control”.

“Our country was once again the target of dark forces,” President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a statement.

The violence began mid-morning when heavy gunfire broke out in the centre of the Burkinabe capital.

Witnesses said five armed men got out of a car and opened fire on passersby before heading towards the French embassy.

At the same time, the bomb went off near the headquarters of the Burkinabe armed forces and the French cultural centre, about a kilometre from the site of the first attack, other witnesses said.

Sawadogo said the G5 meeting was supposed to have been held at the headquarters but had been moved to another room.

“Perhaps it was the target. We do not know at the moment. In any case the room was literally destroyed by the explosion,” the minister said.

‘Strengthen our resolve’ 

The G5 Sahel’s completed force will be composed of 5,000 troops and aims to be fully operational by the end of the month.

It has already carried out operations against jihadist fighters with help from the French army.

Mahamadou Issoufou, Niger’s president and the current chair of the group, said Friday’s attacks “will only strengthen the resolve of the G5-Sahel and its allies in the fight against terrorism”. 

French President Emmanuel Macron telephoned his Burkinabe counterpart Kabore to express solidarity and send his condolences to the families of the slain security force members, his office said.

Macron, who made a high-profile visit to Burkina Faso in November, said the attacks “illustrate once more the threat weighing on the entire Sahel region”.

French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said damage to the embassy was minor, and the mission would be able to resume normal operations “in two or three days”.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is on a visit to neighbouring Mali, “strongly condemned” the attack while UN chief Antonio Guterres called for an “urgent and concerted effort” to improve stability in the Sahel.

An interim UN report seen by AFP warned of a “growing threat” to the Sahel from two groups: the terror group Daesh branch in the Great Sahara and Ansar Al Islam.

‘Overtones of terrorism’ 

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Burkina Information Minister Remis Fulgance Dandjinou said the attack “has strong overtones of terrorism”. 

Burkina Faso has a history of military-backed coups as well as militant attacks.

The insurgency in the region has caused thousands of deaths, prompted tens of thousands to flee their homes and dealt crippling blows to economies that are already among the poorest in the world.

On August 13 last year, two assailants opened fire on a restaurant on Ouagadougou’s main avenue, killing 19 people and wounding 21. No one has so far claimed responsibility for that attack.

On January 15, 2016, 30 people — including six Canadians and five Europeans — were killed in a militant attack on a hotel and restaurant in the city centre. 

That attack was claimed by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Murabitoun group, which was led by the one-eyed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

A group called “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” also said some of its militants were involved.

Joint Sahel force 

France, the former colonial power in the Sahel region, has deployed 4,000 troops to support the G5 joint force.

On February 21, two members of the French counter-terrorism force were killed by a landmine near Mali’s border with Niger and Burkina Faso. Twelve French soldiers have died since the campaign — called Operation Barkhane — was launched in August 2014.

The United Nations also has a 12,000-strong peacekeeping force in Mali called MINUSMA, which has taken heavy casualties. Four UN peacekeepers were killed by a mine blast on Wednesday in the centre of the country.

BERLIN — The latest hack of German government networks involved complex malicious software and targeted more sensitive data than a 2015 breach of the German parliament, a leading member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives said on Thursday.

Patrick Sensburg, a member of the parliamentary committee that oversees German intelligence agencies, told broadcaster ZDF it would take time to analyse the incident that the German government on Wednesday said had been “isolated” and contained.

He said it was premature to link the cyber attack — as German media reports have done — to a Russian hacking group known as APT28, although he said there was sufficient evidence that the group had links to a Russian spy agency.

“One has to carefully examine a software like this one that is extremely complex,” Sensburg told the broadcaster. 

Germany on Wednesday said security officials were investigating an isolated attack on its government computer networks, but the incident had been brought under control. It did not confirm that the foreign and defence ministries were affected by the attack.

Sensburg said there had been rumours about a possible breach of government networks, but his high-level committee had not been informed about the attack by government officials. 

The panel will receive a closed-door briefing from the government around midday. A separate panel on digital issues also called an extraordinary meeting to discuss the breach.

War in the Internet 

“We have a sort of war going on in the Internet,” Sensburg said, adding that it remained unclear whether any data was stolen as a result of the breach, and if so, what sort of data.

At the same time, he said this attack was clearly focused on more sensitive data than the 2015 hack of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, that resulted in the loss of 16 gigabytes of data, and which German officials have blamed on the APT28 hacking group, also known as Fancy Bear or Sofacy.

Bild newspaper said security officials were struck by the sophistication of the attack, which exceeded levels previously seen, and therefore assumed it was not carried out by the same group that carried out the 2015 hack.

Benjamin Read, head of cyber espionage analysis at FireEye, a US-based cyber security firm, said the German incident could be part of a series of attacks carried out by APT28 against US and European government-related entities in 2016 and 2017.

German intelligence officials have warned about possible meddling by Russia in last year’s federal election.

Western governments and security experts have linked APT28 to a Russian spy agency, and have blamed it for an attack on the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 US elections.

Moscow has previously denied in any way having been involved in cyber attacks on the German political establishment.

Conservative lawmaker Roderich Kiesewetter told Die Welt newspaper the attack showed that government agencies needed more funding and personnel to be able to respond.

Top German intelligence officials have also urged lawmakers to give them greater legal authority to “hack back” in the event of cyber attacks from foreign powers.

PARIS — Countries across Europe shut schools and rushed to shelter homeless people on Wednesday as a deadly blast of Siberian weather dubbed the “Beast from the East” kept the mercury far below zero.

The death toll rose to at least 42 since Friday as the brutal cold claimed its first victim in Serbia, a 75-year-old man whose body was found in a field two days after he went missing from the southern village of Malosista, state television reported.

The victims also include 18 people in Poland, six in the Czech Republic, five in Lithuania, four each in France and Slovakia, and two each in Italy and Romania.

Homeless people account for many of the dead, and cities across Europe have been racing to open emergency shelters to protect people sleeping rough.

In Germany, the national homeless association urged shelters to open during the day and not just at night.

“You can die of cold during the day too,” its chief Werena Rosenke warned.

Authorities are also urging people to look out for elderly relatives and neighbours after a French woman in her nineties was found frozen to death outside her retirement home.

In Paris, some 50 regional lawmakers were to spend Wednesday night on the streets to protest the “denial of dignity” suffered by those without roofs over their heads.

In the northern port of Calais, authorities were launching emergency plans to shelter migrants who camp out near the coast hoping to stow away on trucks bound for Britain.

Schools were shut across Kosovo, western Bosnia and much of Albania, as well as parts of Britain, Italy and Portugal.

Temperatures again plunged below -20 Celsius overnight in numerous parts of Europe.

Ahead of a predicted thaw towards the end of the week, both Belgium and Switzerland marked their coldest night of the winter so far.

In the usually balmy south of France, residents in Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz were heading out with skis to zoom down the snowy streets of what are usually beach resorts.

Bread-hoarding 

in Ireland 

Europe’s cold snap comes as the Arctic experiences record-high temperatures, prompting scientists to ask if global warming may be playing a role in turning things upside down.

Dubbed the “Siberian bear” by the Dutch and the “snow cannon” by Swedes, the icy blast has played havoc with transport networks.

Swedish authorities urged drivers in parts of the south to leave their cars at home, while British Airways was running a reduced service from London Heathrow on Wednesday.

In Ireland, anxious residents were hoarding bread and milk ahead of the arrival of a storm on Thursday which is expected to cause the heaviest snowfall in decades. 

“It’s fair to say the people of Ferrybank and Slieverue are taking the #Beastfromtheeast serious,” said one Twitter post alongside a picture of empty supermarket shelves.

‘Coldest job in Austria’ 

Kosovo announced restrictions on electricity usage lasting between one and three hours, due to a surge in power consumption mirrored across Europe as people turn up the thermostat.

In the Netherlands, Amsterdam residents are hoping to be able to skate on the city’s famed canals this weekend, with some areas already closed to boats to allow the ice to solidify.

Even professionals are feeling the chill.

In Amstetten in northwest Austria which is hosting international championships for ice stock — a sport similar to curling — organisers moved the opening ceremony inside due to the cold. 

Austrians were reserving particular sympathy for Ludwig Rasser and Norbert Daxbacher, two employees at the Sonnblick weather station 3,109 metres above sea level.

Handed the honour of having the “coldest job in Austria” by the Oesterreich tabloid, Rasser and Daxbacher are charged with heading out to measure the temperature three times a day.

The process takes an hour in temperatures of -32°C — which “with the windchill feels like -60°C”, Rasser said.

BUCHAREST — Two people were found dead in Romania as snow and sub-zero temperatures across much of Europe saw flights cancelled, road and rail transport disrupted and schools closed on Tuesday.

A Siberian weather system forecasters have called the "beast from the east" brought the coldest temperatures for years to many regions. The freeze was expected to continue for much of the week.

In southern Romania, an 83-year-old woman from Adancata was found collapsed in the snow and died on the way to hospital, the Institute for Emergency Situations said. A 65-year-old man was found dead late on Monday in the eastern county of Suceava, an official told state news agency Agerpres.

Parts of a motorway linking the capital Bucharest to Constanta and dozens of other roads were closed. More than 80 trains and 15 flights were cancelled, Romanian police said, and Romania's Black Sea ports were closed.

Record snowfall of 182cm paralysed the northern Croatian town of Delnice and rescue services took several hours to evacuate residents in the nearby village of Mrzle Vodice. Temperatures hit a low of -20ºC in Zavizan on the Velebit mountain.

Schools were closed in Bucharest and ten Romanian counties as well as across western and central Croatia.

The roofs of dozens of houses collapsed under the weight of snow in the Unsko-Sanski canton in northwestern Bosnia.

State-run RTCG TV reported that Montenegro's main Golubovci Airport was closed for several hours overnight.

In Britain, parts of the east saw up to 10cm of snow and the weather service said temperatures could fall towards -10ºC in some rural areas.

Some schools closed on Tuesday and train services and some flights were cancelled. In London, snow covered some parts of Westminster and a blizzard briefly swept through the Canary Wharf financial district.

A rare snowstorm in Rome on Monday prompted Italian authorities to call in the army to help clear the streets.

As the storm moved south on Tuesday, Naples saw the most snow since 1956. It blanketed the beach and covered fishing boats in small city ports such as Santa Lucia and Mergellina.

With a snow-covered Mount Vesuvius providing the backdrop, the snow paralysed traffic and train services. Schools were closed in Naples and much of southern Italy.

WELLINGTON/MELBOURNE — At least one company began evacuating non-essential personnel after a powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) energy-rich interior on Monday, causing landslides, damaging buildings and closing oil and gas operations. 

The tremour hit in the rugged, heavily forested Southern Highlands about 560km northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, at around 3:45am local time (15:45GMT Sunday), according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

A spokesman at PNG’s National Disaster Centre said by telephone the affected area was very remote and the agency could not properly assess damage until communication was re-established.

He said there were no confirmed casualties, although the International Red Cross (IRC) in PNG said some reports indicated there were “fears of human casualties”.

“It’s very serious all across the Southern Highlands and also all over the western highlands. People are definitely very frightened,” Udaya Regmi, the head of the IRC in Papua New Guinea, said by telephone from Port Moresby.

The PNG government also said it had sent disaster assessment teams. At least 13 aftershocks with a magnitude of 5.0 or more rattled the area throughout the day, according to USGS data, but no tsunami warnings were issued.

Early on Tuesday, USGS reported that another quake with a magnitude of 6.4 had hit 142km from the city of Mount Hagen at a depth of
about 10km.

“The Papua New Guinea Defence Force has also been mobilised to assist with the assessment and the delivery of assistance to affected people as well as the restoration of services and infrastructure,” Isaac Lupari, the chief secretary to the government, said in a statement after Monday’s tremour.

ExxonMobil said it had shut its Hides gas conditioning plant and that it believed administration buildings, living quarters and a mess hall had been damaged. It also said it had suspended flights into the nearby Komo airfield until the runway could be surveyed.

“Due to the damage to the Hides camp quarters and continuing aftershocks, ExxonMobil PNG is putting plans in place to evacuate non-essential staff,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.

Gas is processed at Hides and transported along a 700km line that feeds a liquefied natural gas plant near Port Moresby for shipping.

PNG oil and gas explorer Oil Search said in a statement it had also shut production in the quake-affected area.

The giant Grasberg copper mine operated by the Indonesian unit of Freeport McMoRan in neighbouring Papua province was not affected, a Jakarta-based spokesman said.

However, the quake and several aftershocks caused panic in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian Papua, Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said in a statement, but there were no reports of casualties or damage there.

The IRC’s Regmi said communications were “completely down” in Tari, one of the larger settlements near the quake’s epicentre, and that landslides had cut roads.

Several other aid and missionary agencies said poor communications in the area made damage and injury assessment difficult.

“The bush structures that they build tend to handle earthquakes extremely well,” Christian missionary Brandon Buser told Reuters after contacting several remote villages by shortwave radio.

Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits on the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire”, a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates.

“This is the Papuan fold-and-thrust belt, so it’s a typical movement of faults in that region, but it’s big,” said Chris McKee, acting director of the Geohazards Management Division in Port Moresby.

Part of PNG’s northern coast was devastated in 1998 by a tsunami, generated by a 7.0 quake, which killed about 2,200 people.

SEOUL — Senior officials from Pyongyang visiting South Korea on Sunday said North Korea was open to talks with the United States, according to the South's presidency, hours after the North accused Washington of trying to stir up conflict on the peninsula with new sanctions.

In Pyeongchang for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the visiting delegation also said developments in relations between the two Koreas and between North Korea and the United States should go hand in hand, the South's presidency said in a statement.

The delegation met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at an undisclosed location in the Olympic city.

Responding to the meeting, the US State Department said improved relations between South and North Korea hinged on resolving Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

"We are in close contact with the Republic of Korea about our unified response to North Korea. As President Moon stated, 'the improvement of relations between North and South Korea cannot advance separately from resolving North Korea's nuclear programme,'" a State Department spokesman said.

Earlier a statement released by North Korean state media accused the United States of provoking confrontation on the Korean Peninsula with Friday's sanctions announcement.

Sunday's closing ceremony was attended by Moon, the North Korean delegation, and US President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, among other dignitaries.

Ivanka Trump, who is a senior White House adviser, had no interaction with the North Korean delegation, a senior US administration official said. She met Moon on Friday as part of a weekend trip to lead the US delegation to the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

The Olympics have given a boost to engagement between the two Koreas after more than a year of sharply rising tension over the North's missile tests and its sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of UN sanctions.

But the closing days of the Games were overshadowed by the US announcement that it was imposing its largest package of sanctions aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programmes. 

"Thanks to our supreme leadership's noble love for the nation and strong determination for peace, long-awaited inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation have been realised and the Olympics took place successfully by the inter-Korean collaboration," the North's KCNA state news agency said, citing North Korea's ministry of foreign affairs. 

"On the eve of closing of the Olympics, United States is running amok to bring another dark cloud of confrontation and war over the Korean peninsula by announcing enormous sanctions against the DPRK," it said, using the initials of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Earlier, about 100 conservative South Korean lawmakers and activists staged a sit-in near the border with North Korea, facing off against about 2,500 South Korean police to protest against the arrival of a northern delegation led by Kim Yong Chol, an official accused of being behind a deadly 2010 attack on a South Korean warship.

The delegation took a different route, prompting the opposition Korea Liberty Party to accuse President Moon Jae-in's administration of "abuse of power and an act of treason" by re-routing the motorcade to shield it from the protest.

Moon met Kim in Pyeongchang, where the Olympics are being held, before the closing ceremony, the South Korean government said in a statement.

The North's decision to send former military intelligence chief Kim Yong-chol as delegation leader to the closing ceremony has enraged families of 46 sailors killed in the torpedo attack on their ship and threatens the mood of rapprochement that Seoul wants to create at what it calls the "Peace Games".

North Korea has denied its involvement in the sinking.

Trump warning

For the opening ceremony, the North sent Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

She was the centre of a frenzy of attention, especially when she appeared at the opening ceremony and stood only a few feet from US Vice President Mike Pence. They did not speak together.

Kim Yo-jong and the North's nominal head of state were the most senior North Korean officials to visit the South in more than a decade. The North Korean leader later said he wanted to boost a "warm climate of reconciliation and dialogue".

US President Donald Trump, in announcing the new sanctions on Friday, warned of a "phase two" that could be "very, very unfortunate for the world" if the sanctions did not work.

North Korea denounced the sanctions in a statement carried on its state media and said a blockade by the United States would be considered an act of war.

China also reacted angrily to the new US measures, saying on Saturday the unilateral targeting of Chinese firms and people risked harming cooperation on North Korea.

Moon won election last year promising to try to improve relations with the North.

KABUL — At least 23 people, mostly soldiers, were killed and more than a dozen wounded in a series of attacks and suicide bombings in Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, the latest assaults on the war-torn country's beleaguered security forces.

In the biggest attack, Taliban militants stormed an army base in the western province of Farah overnight, killing at least 18 soldiers.

"Last night a big group of militants attacked an army base in Bala Buluk district of Farah. Unfortunately, we lost 18 soldiers, two soldiers were wounded. We have sent more reinforcements to the area," Defence Ministry spokesman Daulat Wazir said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Deputy Provincial Governor Younus Rasooli said the authorities had sent a fact-finding delegation to Bala Buluk to investigate the assault.

In another attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the diplomatic area of Kabul during the morning rush hour, killing at least three people and wounding five others, Deputy Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told AFP.

"At around 8:30am, a suicide bomber on foot, well-dressed with a necktie on, was identified at a checkpoint. He blew up his explosives, killing three and wounding five others," he said, updating an earlier toll.

A security source who requested not to be named said the explosion happened near a compound belonging to the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan intelligence agency. The NDS compound is located near the NATO headquarters and the US embassy.

"I was driving nearby when I heard a big explosion, the windows of my car were smashed. I saw several wounded people on the street near me," a witness told Tolonews TV adding that security forces had since swarmed the area, closing off the main road leading to the attack site.

The terror group Daesh, which is trying to make inroads in Afghanistan, claimed the responsibility for the Kabul attack.

In December, a suicide attacker on foot blew himself up near the same compound, killing at least six civilians.

Kabul has recently seen an increase in attacks by both Taliban and Daesh.

Since mid-January, militants have stormed a luxury hotel, bombed a crowded street and raided a military compound in the capital, killing more than 130 people as the city remains on high alert fearing further violence.

In two other attacks on Saturday in volatile southern Helmand province, suicide car bombs killed at least two soldiers and wounded more than a dozen others, officials said.

In the first incident, militants used a Humvee to attack an army base in Nad Ali district but the vehicle was destroyed when soldiers identified it and hit it with a rocket propelled grenade, provincial spokesman Omar Zawak told AFP.

"Unfortunately, two soldiers were killed in the attack and seven wounded," he said.

The Nad Ali attack was followed by a second suicide car bombing in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah that wounded seven people.

The attack was against an NDS compound and near police headquarters in the city, Helmand police spokesman Salaam Afghan told AFP.

The Taliban claimed both attacks in Helmand.

Militants including the Taliban and Daesh have stepped up their attacks on Afghan troops and police in recent months, sapping morale already hit by desertions and corruption.

Afghan soldiers have taken what the UN describes as "shocking" casualties since international forces ended their combat role at the end of 2014, though troop casualty figures are no longer released.