Suicide Bomb Kills 4 Civilians In Afghan Capital

Fourteen wounded civilians were taken to the nearby Emergency Hospital and one died on the way, hospital officials said.

A suicide car bomb killed four Afghan civilians and wounded 19 more in an attack outside a U.S. military base and the German embassy in the Afghan capital on Saturday, officials and witnesses said.

A sewage tanker and several cars were burning at the scene and there were blood stains on the road as police loaded bodies and wounded onto the back of pick-up trucks and ambulances ferried wounded to nearby hospitals, a Reuters witness said.

Four Afghan civilians were killed and 19 were wounded, the Ministry of Interior said in a statement. Earlier an official at the+ Presidential Palace said two civilians were killed and 23 others were wounded.

Fourteen of the wounded were taken to the nearby Emergency Hospital and one died on the way, hospital officials said.

A middle-aged woman outside the hospital was beating her head and screaming that her son had died. She was almost hit by a car as she ran out into the road. Another man was crying and said his son had also been killed.

Six U.S. troops were also wounded by the blast, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said.

The bomber struck on a road lined with high concrete blast barriers that runs between the German embassy and Camp Eggers, the headquarters of a U.S. unit that trains the Afghan army and police. The presidential palace and United Nations headquarters in Afghanistan lie immediately behind Camp Eggers.

MOST VICTIMS CIVILIANS

A spokesman for the U.S. force based at Camp Eggers said three soldiers had been evacuated to a military hospital at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of Kabul. The perimeter of the base was not penetrated by the explosion, he said.

There were no Germans hurt at the embassy, a spokeswoman said.

Another suicide car bomber killed one civilian, and wounded three more and three policemen in the village of Chaparhar in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a provincial spokesman said.

Taliban militants, fighting to overthrow the Western-backed Afghan government and drive out foreign troops, have launched hundreds of suicide attacks in the last two years, but some 80 percent of the victims are Afghan civilians.

While Taliban influence has spread from their traditional heartlands in the south and east to areas closer to the capital, there were fewer attacks inside Kabul last year than in 2007 with many more police checkpoints throughout the city.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy priority after he comes to office on Tuesday and is expected to approve the doubling of U.S. troops in the country from the 30,000 at present.

In a separate incident a U.S. military chinook helicopter made a hard landing in Kunar province in east Afghanistan. All passengers were safe, a U.S. military spokesman said. It is the second U.S. helicopter accident in Afghanistan in as many days.

No further details were available and the incident was under investigation, the spokesman added, but a provincial official told Reuters he could see smoke rising from the helicopter and passengers being exacuated from the aircraft.