Explosion outside Indian embassy in Kabul kills scores

AFP - Afghanistan's interior ministry said Thursday that 12 people were killed and 83 others wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in the capital Kabul.

"As a result of a suicide car bomb attack today, 12 people were martyred and 83 were wounded. Most of the casualties are civilians," Zemarai Bashary, ministry spokesman, told AFP.

The toll is significantly higher than one provided earlier by the office of President Hamid Karzai, who said seven people had died and more than 60 were hurt.

A spokesman at the health ministry, Ahmad Farid Rahid, told AFP that 84 people had been wounded.

The attack, which the ministry confirmed as a suicide car bombing, took place by the Indian embassy at around 8.30 am (0400 GMT) in Kabul's high security embassy and government district.

The area was reduced to rubble, with body parts and the remains of cars and bicycles scattered across a large area and a massive crater in the middle of the road near the corner of the Indian embassy compound.

A senior Indian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said the embassy had been the target, as it was in July last year with the deaths of 60 people.

India's ambassador to Afghanistan, Jayant Prasad, told Indian television that no Indians at the embassy had been killed, but there some had sustained minor injuries as glass doors and windows had been blown out.