MIHTARLAM, Afghanistan: Gunmen shot dead five young Afghan men playing volleyball, officials said Friday, but Taleban insurgents responsible for much of Afghanistan’s unrest denied any involvement in the killings.

Former warlord Ismail Khan, a vice-presidential candidate in the forthcoming April election, also escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a suicide bomber detonated himself outside a mosque after Friday prayers.

The volleyball players were gunned down in the eastern province of Laghman by attackers riding on a motorbike.

“Armed men opened fire on a volleyball game. The players were young men, all innocent, and all of them were killed,” Sarhadi Zwak, spokesman for Laghman’s provincial governor, said.

The Taleban regime between 1996-2001 banned volleyball and many other activities, but a spokesman for the group said it was not responsible for Thursday’s deaths.

“We completely reject this allegation. We are not involved in this killing at all. Those who killed them are not our men,” Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Some local reports said the victims had been playing cricket, but Habib-ul-Rahman, the governor of Alingar district where the attack took place, confirmed the provincial spokesman’s account and death toll.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack and said such violence would not deter Afghans’ search for peace and development.

Ismail Khan was coming out of the mosque in Herat city, the provincial capital, when the bomber set off his explosives. No one except the would-be suicide bomber was killed in the explosion, said Ahmadi. Khan could not be reached for comment.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which underscored some of the challenges Afghanistan faces ahead of the election, a vote that will help shape the country’s future following the departure of foreign combat troops.

In 2010, President Hamid Karzai had wanted to keep Khan — a Tajik who was a prominent warlord during the civil war of the 1990s and who retains considerable local power among his minority — in his administration, but the nomination was narrowly defeated. Critics said keeping Khan would have proven Karzai remained beholden to regional power brokers at the expense of the country’s national interests.

Khan, 67, is now running as VP on the ticket of presidential contender, Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, also a former warlord. Karzai can’t run for a third consecutive term and has not yet endorsed anyone. There are no clear favorites in the race.

Both Sayyaf and Khan were known as warlords during Afghanistan’s civil war from 1992 until the Taleban takeover in 1996, fighting on the side of the Northern Alliance against the Taleban. Previously, both also actively participated in the war against the Soviet occupation.