News: Blasts, gunfire hit Kabul military hospital

At least 30 people killed, dozens wounded at Sardar Daud Khan military hospital in central Kabul, officials say.

At least 30 people have been killed and dozens others wounded in a bomb and gun attack on a military hospital in Afghanistan's capital, officials said.

Defence ministry officials said the attack started at 9am with a blast at the front gate of the Sardar Daud Khan hospital in the Wazir Akbar Khan area, central Kabul, on Wednesday.

The gunmen, dressed as medical personnel, took position on upper floors of the hospital and engaged special forces sent to the scene, officials said.

Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for the defence ministry, told Al Jazeera three attackers with automatic weapons and hand grenades entered the complex, the largest of its kind in the Afghan capital.

"Our security forces engaged but they were also careful to not cause any casualties. It was a difficult situation," Waziri said. 

Security forces blocked off the area around the hospital, near a busy traffic intersection. As fighting went on, a second explosion struck inside the hospital.

Some patients climbed out of the building and could be seen sheltering on window ledges visible from outside the hospital, which treats military casualties from across Afghanistan.

The Taliban, which has staged similar raids in the past, denied responsibility for the attack.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack, saying it "trampled on all human values.

"In all religions, a hospital is regarded as an immune site and attacking it is attacking the whole of Afghanistan," he said in impromptu remarks during a speech for International Women's Day in Kabul.

The Wazir Akbar Khan area of central Kabul is heavily guarded and houses several government offices and foreign embassies.

The attack comes a week after 16 people were killed in simultaneous Taliban suicide assaults on two security compounds in Kabul.

Dozens of others were wounded as a suicide car bomber struck an Afghan police precinct in western Kabul and a five-hour gun battle ensued after another attacker sneaked in, sending clouds of smoke billowing into the sky.

In the second attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of an Afghan intelligence agency branch in eastern Kabul.

The growing violence underscores rising insecurity in Afghanistan over the resurgent Taliban.

The country is bracing for an intense fighting season in the spring as the government's repeated bids to launch peace negotiations with the Taliban have failed.

Kabul last month endorsed US general John Nicholson's call for thousands of additional coalition troops in Afghanistan to fend off the group before the spring offensive.

Extra troops were needed to end the stalemate in the war, Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, told the US Congress in what could be President Donald Trump's first major test of military strategy.

Separately, the Pentagon this year said it would deploy some 300 US Marines this spring to Helmand province alone.

The Marines will assist a NATO-led mission to train Afghan forces, in the latest sign that foreign forces are increasingly being drawn back into the worsening conflict.