Kabul - A bomb hidden in an ambulance
killed at least 17 people and wounded about 110 at a police
checkpoint in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, in an area
near foreign embassies and government buildings, officials said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, a week
after it claimed an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in
Kabul in which more than 20 people were killed.
"It is a massacre," said Dejan Panic coordinator in
Afghanistan for the Italian aid group Emergency, which runs a
nearby trauma hospital. In a message on Twitter, the group said
more than 50 wounded had been brought in to that hospital alone.
A spokesman from the public health ministry said 17 dead and
110 wounded had been brought to city hospitals, and victims were
still being brought in.
Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament who was nearby when
the explosion occurred, said the ambulance approached the
checkpoint, close to an office of the High Peace Council and
several foreign embassies, and blew up.
He said a number of people were lying on the ground. People
helped walking wounded away as ambulances with sirens wailing
inched their way through the traffic-clogged streets of the city
centre.
A plume of grey smoke rose from the blast area in the city
centre and buildings hundreds of metres away were shaken by the
force of the explosion.