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.

Police spokesman Basir Mujahid said today’s bomber was on foot and was trying to make his way to a compound where the Hazaras had gathered to commemorate the 1995 killing of their leader Abdul Ali Mazari by the Taliban.

The bomber came as close to the gathering as he could and detonated his explosives at the checkpoint outside, the spokesman said. One police officer was among the dead.

President Ashraf Ghani quickly condemned the bombing, saying: “These people who do this are acting against humanity and against Islam.”

The country’s Isis affiliate, which calls itself Khorasan Province, claimed responsibility on an Isis-linked website.

Isis said it had targeted a gathering of Shi’ites as they were commemorating the death of a “tyrant,” an apparent reference to Mr Mazari. He was an anti-communist insurgent who founded the Islamic Unity Party.

Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Majro said that several of the wounded were in a critical condition and he feared that the death toll could rise further.