Five Taliban militants have blown themselves up in a house close to Kabul's old city today after 10 hours of clashes with security forces.
A key road linking the area with the centre of the capital has been blocked off by police.
The clash comes just days after a group of Taliban gunmen opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades at a state parade sending President Hamid Karzai, his cabinet and the military top brass diving for cover.
One member of parliament, the head of a minority group and 10-year-old boy were killed in Sunday's attack before police killed three Taliban gunmen.
Taliban fighters fled Kabul in late 2001 in the face of a U.S.-led aerial onslaught and a ground assault by Afghan militia.
In the years immediately after 2001, the Taliban regrouped and two years ago relaunched their insurgency with guerrilla attacks on Afghan and international troops mainly in the south and east, backed by suicide bombs right across the country.
The hardline Islamist militants last year moved into areas immediately south of Kabul and have launched sporadic suicide bomb attacks in the city, but have not before been detected in any numbers in the capital before.