Two Russian diplomats were killed in Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul on Monday following a suicide bombing outside the country’s embassy, Moscow said.

“On September 5, at 10.50 a.m. Kabul time, in the immediate vicinity of the entrance to the consular section of the Russian Embassy in Kabul, an unknown militant set off an explosive device,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Eleven persons have been injured in the attack, reported Reuters.

“The suicide bomber wanted to detonate himself in the crowd, but before he could do that the security forces targeted him, which caused the explosion,” Kabul Police spokesperson Khalid Zadran tweeted. “Security forces have cordoned off the area and launched an investigation into the blast.”

Russia is one of the few countries that has its embassy in Kabul after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021. Although Russia has designated the Taliban as a terrorist group, the two have diplomatic relations.

Last week a Taliban delegation chaired by the commerce ministry visited Moscow to finalise contracts for supplies of wheat, gas and oil, reported ANI.

The suicide bombing is an addition to a spate of attacks that have taken place in Afghanistan this year.

On September 2, an explosion at a mosque in Herat killed pro-Taliban scholar Mujib-ul Rahman Ansari along with 17 civilians. Twenty-one residents of Kabul were killed in a blast at a mosque.

On August 11, a suicide attack in Kabul killed Afghan cleric Rahimullah Haqqani who supported the Taliban. Haqqani was a critic of the jihadist militant group Islamic State Khorasan Province, a regional affiliate of the Islamic State that operates in Afghanistan and opposes the Taliban rule.

The IS group had claimed the responsibility for the bombing that killed Haqqani.