A large blast struck an upmarket suburb in the Afghan capital near the Pakistan Embassy early Tuesday, but it was not immediately clear if there were casualties, according to police. The explosion took place in the Wazir Akbar Khan suburb close to the city centre. “There was an explosion in Wazir Akbar Khan but it is not known at this point what caused it,” said a city police chief, General Zalmai Uriakhail. A suicide car bomb targeting a US military convoy in the Afghan capital Kabul killed two civilians on Tuesday, the latest attack to shake confidence in government efforts to uphold security. The target of Tuesday’s attack was a two-car convoy of US troops outside a Defence Ministry building in the centre of Kabul close to embassies, and offices of the United Nations and World Bank. All that was left of the bomber’s car was the smouldering engine laying some 10 metres away from a metre-wide, burning crater in the road. Glass was shattered over a wide area and twisted shards of metal flew hundreds of metres away. The blackened body of an Afghan civilian lay in the street covered with a prayer rug. A senior police official said the explosion also killed an Afghan security guard. “There was no one injured from our convoy,” said Lieutenant Colonel David Johnson of the Combined Security Transition Command, which trains the Afghan Army. “Our convoy was on a routine mission.”
Responsibility: A spokesman for the Hizb-e-Islami armed group of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed responsibility for the attack. While allied to the Taliban, Hizb-e-Islami has carried out few, if any, suicide attacks.