KABUL – A bomb hidden in an ambulance killed at least 17 people and woundedabout 110 at a police checkpoint in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday,in an area near foreign embassies and government buildings, officials said.
A spokesman from the public health ministry said several people had beenkilled and at least 80 wounded in the blast, which came a week after adeadly attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in the city.“It is a massacre,” said Dejan Panic coordinator in Afghanistan for theItalian aid group Emergency, which runs a nearby trauma hospital. In amessage on Twitter, the group said more than 50 wounded had been brought into that hospital alone.
Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament who was nearby when the explosionoccurred, said the ambulance approached the checkpoint, close to an officeof the High Peace Council and several foreign embassies, and blew up.
He said a number of people were lying on the ground.
A plume of grey smoke rose from the blast area in the city center andbuildings hundreds of meters away were shaken by the force of the explosion.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the blast came afterheightened security alerts following the Intercontinental Hotel attack.That attack, in which more than 20 people were killed, was claimed by theTaliban.