A Taliban suicide bomber carried out today's attack in Kabul which killed as many as six people. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the Taliban fighter driving the car bomb died in the attack.
"I contacted our colleagues and they said that it was a suicide attack by a Taliban fighter," Hakimi told Reuters by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
The powerful explosion wrecked an office of an American security house in the Afghanistan capital Kabul, this afternoon.
The blast hit the office of Dyncorp, a private firm which protects Afghan President Hamid Karzai and works for the US government in Iraq, said Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office.
Downie said he and others who rushed to the scene pulled five to six people from the building with serious injuries, including several US citizens.
"We're looking at a similar number who died, a mixture of Afghans and internationals," said Downie, a former British soldier who advises relief groups on security. "Some were obviously Dyncorp staff."
He said the exact nationalities of the victims were unclear.
A US Embassy spokeswoman said she had no information on casualties in the incident.
The blast occurred in the Shar-e Naw district of central Kabul, an area with offices of international organisations and guesthouses used by their staff.
The building was burning fiercely after the explosion. Windows were blown out of surrounding houses.
Residents said a boy living in a neighbouring house and a cobbler whose stall was blown away by the blast were also killed, and up to eight others wounded.
"It was a very, very big explosion, and there were a lot of injured," said