attacks on foreign targets after launching their spring offensive late last month, claimed responsibility for the car bombing.
“A suicide attack was carried out on foreign forces near the gate of Kabul airport,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter. On Friday the militant group justified its targeting of foreigners, saying that people from “invading countries” do not count as civilians.
“Every foreigner from an invading country especially Nato is considered an invader. We don’t classify any of them as civilian,” Mujahid said on Twitter.
Afghan forces are facing their first fighting season against the Taliban without the full support of US-led foreign combat troops.
Khalilullah Hodkhil, the deputy head of Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, said he had so far received the bodies of two young girls and 19 wounded people.
“All of them are civilians, including women and children,” he told AFP.
“They are under treatment and their wounds are not life-threatening.”
Deputy interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said three civilian vehicles, one of them belonging to foreign troops, were damaged at the site of the attack.
The attack came after Nato on Wednesday formally announced plans to retain a small military presence in Afghanistan after 2016 to help strengthen local security forces.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the future mission would be led by civilians and “will have a light footprint, but... with a military component”.
Afghan forces are now solely responsible for security after Nato’s combat mission formally ended in December, with a small follow-up force staying on to train and support local personnel.
A Taliban suicide bomb hit a European Union police vehicle in Kabul in early January, killing at least one passer-by but not wounding any passengers.
The Taliban have waged a 13-year war to topple the US-backed government in Afghanistan. Official efforts to bring the insurgents to the negotiating table have so far borne little fruit.
The surge in attacks has taken a heavy toll on Afghan civilians, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
In the first four months of 2015, civilian casualties from growing attacks jumped 16 percent over the same period last year, a recent UNAMA statement said.