A suicide car bomber killed seven people in Kabul Wednesday as the Taliban warned that Washington's decision to slow the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan will hamper peace efforts. US President Barack Obama on Tuesday reversed plans to withdraw around 5,000 US troops from Afghanistan this year, an overture to the country's new reform-minded leader, President Ashraf Ghani.
Hosting Ghani at the White House for their first presidential head-to-head, Obama agreed to keep the current level of 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2015.
"Obama's announcement to continue to keep troops in Afghanistan is a response to the peace efforts," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP.
"This damages all the prospects for peace. This means the war will go on until they are defeated," he said.
Hours later, a suicide car bomber struck close to the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens more.
It is the first suicide bombing in the Afghan capital in nearly a month and highlights the fragile security situation as the country prepares for the start of the traditional spring-summer fighting season.
Ghani condemned the attack as "inhuman and un-Islamic", while police said the target of the rush-hour blast appeared to be civilians.
Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said all of those killed and wounded in the attack were civilians, and included women and children.
Since coming to power in September after protracted power-sharing negotiations, Ghani has sought to establish a peace process with the Taliban to end their 13-year insurgency.
Supportive signals from Pakistan, which has long held significant influence over the Taliban, have boosted hopes for possible dialogue.
The Taliban, who have waged a bloody insurgency since being toppled from power in 2001 in a US-led invasion, have always denied talks with the government.
They maintain they will not negotiate while foreign troops remain on Afghan soil.
Nato's combat mission ended in December, leaving the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces to lead the fight against the Taliban. The decision means they will have air and other crucial US support through this year's fighting season, which begins in weeks. But the militants voiced defiance.
"When there were more than 100,000 troops on the ground, they could not beat us - now with 10,000 they cannot do anything," Mujahid said.
The US still plans to reduce its military contingent in Afghanistan to a "Kabul-based embassy presence" by the end of 2016, but the rate at which troops will pull out during that year has yet to be decided, Obama and Ghani said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
Obama said Afghanistan remains a "dangerous place," but insisted the decision to maintain higher troop numbers for longer was not a change in his policy of ending America's frontline involvement soon.
There have been fears that without the military muscle of the US and Nato allies behind them, Afghan forces could struggle to quell a still-resilient Taliban insurgency.
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