A small bomb exploded near the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday, authorities said, after a series of attacks on Indian installations in the region. The blast, which happened the morning after a gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in a northern Afghan city, was some 200 meters from the consulate in Jalalabad, an Indian diplomatic source there said. The source and Afghan authorities said no one had been injured. But Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for India's ministry of external affairs, said the Jalalabad consulate "was not the target." The area also houses the consulates for Pakistan and Iran. Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar province's governor, said authorities were unsure what the target was but a police convoy had been passing at the time. "The explosives were placed in a garbage can," he added. Meanwhile, Afghan special forces killed a group of insurgents holed up in a house in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif late on Monday, bringing to an end a 24-hour siege following the insurgents' attack on the nearby Indian consulate. The soldiers killed the three insurgents who had shut themselves into a large house near the consulate, said Abdul Razaq Qaderi, deputy police chief of Balkh province. He said an investigation was under way to try to identify the men and those behind the attack, which occurred on the same day gunmen attacked an Indian air base in Pathankot in the northwestern state of Punjab near the border with Pakistan. Eight members of the security forces were wounded in the gun battle which followed the attack on the consulate. The Indian ambassador said all the consulate staff were safe. The attack began late on Sunday after gunmen tried unsuccessfully to break into the consulate, taking advantage of the fact that many people were watching the final of a football championship between Afghanistan and India. After a heavy exchange of fire that went on until well into the night, security forces suspended operations before resuming in the morning, firing rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns at the building. "The area is sealed off and we are proceeding cautiously and making all possible efforts to protect the lives of those in the area. The attackers will be killed," the provincial governor, Atta Mohammad Noor, said on his Facebook page. The spike in violence came roughly a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise peacemaking visit to Pakistan following a whirlwind tour of Kabul. India has been a key supporter of Kabul's post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan. The Taliban have also stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan, including a series of assaults in Kabul over the weekend, underscoring a worsening security situation. The volatile province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, also faces an emerging threat from loyalists of the Islamic State group which is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan, challenging the Taliban on their own turf.
