Joe McDowell, an Australian man who was injured in a deadly shooting in central Afghanistan, is now in a stable condition in hospital.

Six people, including three foreigners, were killed and at least five others were injured when gunmen open fired in a market in the city of Bamyan, around 180 kilometres west of capital Kabul, on Friday evening, local time.

Humanitarian aid organisation Emergency said five people wounded in the attack were taken to its surgical centre for war victims in Kabul in the early hours of Saturday.

It confirmed an Australian was among the group taken to the hospital, as well as nationals from Spain, Lithuania, Norway, and Afghanistan.

"The wounded people arrived at our hospital at 3am this [Saturday] morning , about 10 hours after the incident took place," the NGO's country director Dejan Panic said in a statement.

"The Afghan national was the most critically injured, but all patients are now stable."

It said it continues to treat patients injured in attacks around the country despite the security situation improving after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Jibra'il Omar, an Australian academic previously known as Timothy Weeks, posted a photo with Mr McDowell on social media platform X.

"Today I visited my Australian brother, Joe McDowell, who is well and is now in Kabul," he wrote in Persian, adding that Mr McDowell thanked Afghanistan for its support.

Mr Omar converted to Islam and changed his name while being held hostage by the Taliban for three years before being released in a prisoner swap in 2019.

He returned to Afghanistan in 2022, a year after the Taliban returned to power, and says he wants to help rebuild the country.

Besmillah Taban, the former general director of Afghanistan's police criminal investigation unit in the Interior Ministry, posted a cropped in version of the same photo, saying Mr McDowell's condition was "improving day by day".

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) on Saturday said it was providing consular assistance to an Australian, but did not provide further information "owing to our privacy obligations".

Australia does not have any diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and has no formal relationship with the Taliban government.

It established an interim mission following the closure of the Australian Embassy in 2021 and operates out of Doha.

The government says it engages with the Taliban "in multilateral and group meetings to reinforce our expectations" but that this "engagement does not confer legitimacy on the Taliban".

Foreigners targeted

The bodies of three Spanish tourists and three Afghans who were killed were transported to Kabul, the Taliban government said.

Anne-France Brill was one of the dozen foreign travellers on an organised tour who escaped unhurt.

She described the terrifying seconds when a gunman on foot approached the group's vehicles and opened fire.

"There was blood everywhere," she told AFP from Dubai, where she landed on Saturday after being evacuated from Kabul.

The attack is reportedly the first deadly assault on foreign tourists in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

They were evacuated from Bamyan by road as bad weather made an airlift impossible, diplomatic sources said.

One of the wounded, a Spanish woman, had been seriously injured and underwent surgery in Kabul, the Spanish foreign ministry said.

Spain's government on Friday announced that three of the dead were Spanish tourists.

The dead also included three Afghans — two civilians and a Taliban member, the Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said.

Local officials said the civilians were working with the tour group, while the Taliban security official had returned fire when the shooting broke out.

'Shocked and appalled'

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted on social media platform X that he was "overwhelmed" by the news of the murder of Spanish tourists.