* Taliban claims responsibility for bomb attack in Kabul
* Attack targeted minibus carrying Afghan security personnel
(Adds detail throughout)
By Hamid Shalizi
KABUL, Jan 12 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed at least two Afghan security personnel and wounded up to 25 people in an attack near the country's parliament in Kabul on Wednesday, government officials said.
Violence is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces ousted the Islamist government in 2001 after it refused to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
The attack in the Afghan capital targeted a minibus carrying Afghan security forces, said Ministry of Interior spokesman Zemarai Bashary. Up to 25 people were wounded, acting Health Minister Suraya Dalil told Tolo television, but she did not immediately know whether any civilians were among the casualties.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, said spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.
The attack came as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Afghanistan to assess a shift in security responsibilities to Afghan troops from foreign forces in a near-decade long war against a Taliban-led insurgency.
He said in Kabul on Wednesday the momentum of the Taliban has been "largely arrested", echoing the findings of a war strategy review released by President Barack Obama last month.
Attacks in the Afghan capital had been relatively rare in the past year, particularly since a "ring of steel" was erected in the city before a parliamentary election in September.
Last two militants wearing suicide vests attacked a bus of Afghan army officers in Kabul, killing five and wounding nine. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that assault, the first major attack in the Afghan capital since May, when six foreign troops were killed by a large suicide car bomb.
Then last week a bomb in a bag in downtown Kabul killed a policeman and wounded two civilians.
The insurgency has spread out of its traditional strongholds in the south and east over the past two years into once peaceful areas of the north and west.
On Friday, a suicide bomber killed 17 people, including a police commander, inside a Spin Boldak public bathhouse in southern Kandahar province in the Afghanistan's worst attack in more than five months. Then on Monday another suicide bomber in Spin Boldak killed two policemen and one civilian.
Last year a record 711 foreign troops were killed, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.com, up from 521 in 2009.
Afghan security forces have been hit even harder than foreign troops. A total of 1,292 Afghan police and 821 Afghan soldiers were killed in 2010, according to the Afghan government.
Ordinary Afghans, however, have borne the brunt of the fighting. The United Nations has said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 wounded in the first ten months of last year, a 20 percent increase on 2009.
More than three-quarters of the civilians were killed or wounded by insurgent attacks, the United Nations said last month, in a report which the Taliban rejected as "fabricated".
The Afghan government has said 5,225 insurgents were killed last year. (Writing by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Alex Richardson) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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