KABUL, Afghanistan — Two different teams of insurgents launched separate attacks in Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing a police chief and two of his officers in a rural province, and pinning down hundreds of government employees in a ministry building in the capital, officials said.

At the Interior Ministry in Kabul, a sprawling compound near the international airport, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the gate around midday, and an unusually large group of assailants followed, shooting their way in.

Others climbed a tall building nearby, firing rockets into the compound, police officials said. The attack was later claimed by the Islamic State in a Twitter post.

Early reports said one police officer had been killed in the Kabul attack and five wounded, with the assailants, said to number 10, also dead after three hours of fighting, according to Saifurahman Ayar Lemar, the spokesman for the criminal investigation division of the Kabul Police. Some officials feared the death toll would climb much higher.