Three Americans Killed In Kabul Blast

“The company extends its thoughts and prayers to all involved and to their families and loved ones”, the company said in a statement.

“Twelve dead bodies and 66 wounded people were taken to several Kabul hospitals”, Reuters quoted health official Kabir Amiry as saying. The suicide bomber is also believed to among those killed.

Al Jazeera’s Jeniffer Glasse, reporting form Kabul, said: “The target was apparently a vehicle carrying foreign contractors”. Taliban guerrilla weren’t behind today’s attack, the militant group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said in a Twitter posting.

Reports suggest the powerful bomb exploded near a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation convoy and in a residential area of Kabul Saturday night.

Najib Danish, an Interior Ministry deputy spokesman, said the attack destroyed more than a dozen civilian vehicles parked on the street or passing by in Macrorayan, a Soviet-built housing estate lined with shops, hospitals, and schools. That evening, suicide attacks on a police academy and a base used by US special forces killed more than 30 police and security contractors, besides an American soldier.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mission in Afghanistan said three civilian contractors were killed in a blast in Kabul on Saturday, with the Afghan health ministry raising the death toll to 10.

The Taliban, who are fighting to re-establish hard-line Islamist rule more than 13 years after the U.S.-led military intervention toppled their regime, denied it was behind the attack.

The Taliban have staged a series of bombings and other high-profile attacks in Kabul in recent months aimed primarily at Afghan government institutions and global forces. No group has claimed responsibility.

The assault struck close to the personal Shinozada hospital, the sound of the highly effective blast roaring all through the capital.