Five G4S employees, including one Briton and four Afghan nationals, have been killed in a Taliban attack on a compound in Kabul on Wednesday, the company said.

“It is with great sadness that we can confirm that five of our employees were killed and 32 were injured, five of them seriously, in an unprovoked, criminal attack on one of our compounds in Kabul on 28 November 2018,” G4S said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

On Thursday afternoon, the Briton who died in the attack was named as Luke Griffin. 

The 33-year-old, from the Merseyside area, worked for the company for eight years.

An interior ministry official said an unknown number of gunmen had entered the compound after a car bomb exploded near the facility on the main road leading out of Kabul towards eastern Afghanistan.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. The insurgents’ main spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the attack had caused heavy casualties and had been launched in retaliation for casualties caused by security forces in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

Efforts to open talks with the insurgents have picked up following the appointment of US special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad earlier this year, but the violence that kills thousands every year has continued.

Three US service members were killed close to the central city of Ghazni on Tuesday and at least 30 Afghan civilians were killed in a U.S. air strike overnight, officials and local residents said.

Last week, more than 50 people were killed in Kabul when a suicide bomber attacked a banquet hall where a meeting of religious leaders was taking place.

Earlier on Wednesday, three gunmen attacked the Kabul residence of former spy chief Amrullah Saleh but there was no indication of any connection with the GS4 attack.