Victims of the attack traveled home to break their Ramadan fast from dawn to dusk.
Two blasts, minutes apart, have killed at least nine people and wounded 13 in northern Afghanistan.
Thursday’s blasts targeted two separate vehicles in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. Victims of the attack were traveling home to break their Ramadan fast from dawn to dusk, said Mohammad Asif Waziri, a spokesman for a Taliban-appointed police chief.
“The targets appear to be Shia passengers,” Waziri said.
“Afghanistan’s enemies are creating tension and division among our people.”
The source of the explosions was not immediately clear and no one has claimed responsibility.
Taliban security cordoned off the area and residents said members of the Shiite Hazara ethnic minority appeared to be the target of the attack.
The attack is the latest in a series of deadly bombings to rock Afghanistan and comes just days after a deadly bomb exploded at a Shiite mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif that killed at least 12 worshipers and wounded dozens more. .
Another bomb attack on another mosque in the northern city of Kunduz last week targeted the minority Sufi community and killed at least 36 people at Friday prayers.
In another attack, also targeting Shiites, two bombs detonated at a school in Kabul, killing six students.
The ISIL group (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack on the mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif, but so far no group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Kunduz. ISIL’s regional branch in Sunni-majority Afghanistan has repeatedly targeted Shias and minorities such as Sufis.
ISIL is a Sunni group, like the Taliban, but the two are bitter rivals. Their biggest ideological difference is that the Taliban only wanted an Afghanistan free of foreign forces, while ISIL wants a so-called caliphate stretching from Turkey to Pakistan and beyond.
Shia Afghans, who are mostly from the Hazara community, make up 10 to 20 percent of Afghanistan’s population of 38 million.
Taliban officials insist their forces have defeated ISIL, but analysts say the armed group is a key security challenge.