Taliban denies attacking Indian consulate in Afghanistan

The Afghan Taliban has denied carrying out the attack on Indian consulate in the country.

Three suicide attackers killed at least nine civilians, most of them children, in an attack on the Indian consulate in an eastern Afghan city near the border with Pakistan.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the Indian Embassy condemning the consulate attack tweeted that such coward attacks will not deter India from providing reconstruction and developmental assistance to Afghanistan.

In the latest attack, police fired on the militants as they approached a checkpoint outside the consulate in Jalalabad, prompting one of them to set off their explosives-laden car, Masum Khan Hashimi, the deputy police chief of Nangarhar province, said.

All three attackers also died, although it was not clear how many were killed by police fire and how many by the explosion.

In New Delhi, India's External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said that all Indian officials in the consulate were safe, the report added.