Large blast rocks Afghan capital near area housing embassies

KABUL — A large explosion has rocked the Afghan capital and smoke is rising from a part of eastern Kabul, near a neighbourhood housing the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions.

Firdaus Faramarz, a spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, says the blast occurred in the city’s Ninth Police District.

The blast took place on Thursday morning as a U.S. envoy has been in the capital briefing the Afghan government and others on a deal he says has been reached “in principle” with the Taliban on ending America’s longest war.

A Taliban suicide bombing in eastern Kabul on Monday night — which the insurgents said targeted a foreign compound — killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 100, almost all of them local civilians.