Afghan security forces at the site of the attack in Jalalabad where suicide attackers detonated bombs outside a major Nato base. Reuters

A squad of suicide car bombers and gunmen have targeted the main Nato airbase in eastern Afghanistan, reportedly killing five Afghans and wounding several foreign soldiers.

Two men in a Toyota car and an SUV detonated their explosives at an entry gate to the compound in Jalalabad city just before 6am on Sunday. Six or seven gunmen then attempted to rush in through the breach the blasts created.

Guards from Afghan and international forces called in helicopters to help fight the group off in a gun battle that the acting provincial police chief, Jamil Shamal, said lasted around half an hour. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, naming one of the suicide bombers as Sadiquallah.

One confirmed victim was a medical student, Saraj al Haq, who was crossing a road at the time. The 25-year-old, from Nangarhar province, was working as a nurse while studying to be a doctor, said Mohammad Sabir, head of the provincial university.

The men did not get inside the airport compound, which has been one of the most heavily targeted major military bases in Afghanistan, and no foreign soldiers were killed, Nato said. A spokesman declined to comment how many soldiers were injured or how badly.

"Coalition forces at the airbase successfully defended it, a gunbattle took place and I can confirm that coalition air force were involved," said Martin Crighton, spokesman for the Nato-led coalition. "According to our operational reporting at least one member of the ANSF [Afghan national security forces] was killed and others were wounded."

Reuters said the attackers killed five people in all – three Afghan soldiers and a civilian – while seven of the insurgents who launched the followup attack died in the gunbattle.

Jalalabad is the main city in Afghanistan's volatile east, an hour's drive from the border with Pakistan, where the Taliban and other insurgent groups are based. The airport, known to the military as Forward Operating Base Fenty, has been the target of several attacks – most recently in February this year, when a suicide car bomber killed nine Afghans, most of them civilians. The Taliban also claimed that attack and said it was in revenge for the burning of copies of the Qur'an by foreign troops.

Most foreign bases in Afghanistan have an outer ring of Afghan guards and multiple layers of blast walls and other defences that make it very hard for attackers to get inside the compound or target foreign soldiers. Instead the dead are usually Afghan soldiers and police, or civilians who happened to be in the area.

Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri