At least one person killed as mortar shells hit Afghan capital

An early morning barrage of mortar shells slammed into the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least one civilian and wounding a second.

Officials said the rockets were fired from the northern edge of the city and mostly landed in eastern areas.

"This morning, 10 rockets were fired from the Labe Jar neighbourhood of Kabul," interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian told reporters.

He said three rockets landed near Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport and seven in residential areas, leaving one civilian dead and two wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack and the Taliban insurgent group denied any involvement. Afghanistan’s ISIS affiliate has carried out similar attacks in the past, including last month when it claimed credit for firing more than two dozen mortar rounds that killed eight civilians and wounded 31.

Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh said on his Facebook page on Saturday that he had received a warning from ISIS that it would "transform Kabul into a slaughterhouse for Shiites" if any of the extremist group's militants arrested by government forces were executed.

In recent months, Mr Saleh and his aides have pushed for public trials of "terrorists" arrested in connection with deadly attacks and for those found guilty to be hanged publicly.

ISIS has regularly claimed attacks targeting the minority Shiite Hazara community in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, in a separate statement, the interior ministry said attacks such as Saturday's were aimed at "soft targets".

"The enemies of the people of Afghanistan have intensified the violence," it said.

"But they have failed to capture districts and they have lost in the battlefields, so they have resorted to hitting at soft targets," it said.

Violence has surged across Afghanistan in recent months, with several deadly attacks carried out in Kabul, despite the Taliban and the government engaging in peace talks since September 12 in Qatar.

Apart from the November rocket attack, ISIS claimed two deadly assaults in Kabul.

Those attacks targeted educational centres in the capital that killed at least 50 people, mostly students, including one on Kabul University that saw gunmen spraying classrooms with bullets.

Authorities blamed the attacks on educational centres on the Haqqani network, an affiliate of the Taliban.

Violence has also surged amid an ongoing withdrawal of US troops.

In November, the Pentagon said it would pull 2,000 troops out of Afghanistan, speeding up the timeline established in a February agreement between Washington and the Taliban that envisions a full withdrawal by May 2021.

The deal also stipulates that the insurgents will not target key cities in the country, although Afghan authorities have blamed them for such attacks.