Suicide Bomber Strikes Near Hotel in Kabul

Kabul, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber Intrepid outside a popular hotel for foreigners on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding 40 others, Afghan authorities said. Four women were among the dead, according to Interior Ministry.

The explosion occurred just outside a hotel frequented by foreigners and some buildings owned by a former Afghan Vice President, Ahmed Zia Massoud, you can target. Mr. Massoud is the brother of legendary guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who battled Soviet forces during the 1980s and assassinated by a suicide bomber on September 9, 2001, two days before the terrorist attacks against the United States.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said during a televised speech to a conference on corruption on Tuesday that two of Mr. Massoud's bodyguards was killed.

An aide said Mr. Massoud is safe, and that he believes the target could be Heetal Hotel, which is owned by relatives of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan mujahedeen leader and president.

It was the deadliest attack in the capital in six weeks. The Taliban assault on a house-guest killed eight people in October, including five United Nations staff members. The hotel bombing Tuesday was also the first significant attack in Kabul since President Karzai was sworn in to office for a second term last month.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a telephone interview that he did not know if bombs were the work of the Taliban.

Body of dead and wounded were carried away by the Afghan police officers and citizens hurried to the scene. The blast shook buildings in the upscale neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan, home to many embassies and Western aid groups.

One of the civilians Rescuers, Hedyatullah Rahmani, gathered himself from the force of explosion and raced two blocks to the scene of suicide car bomb-stricken central Kabul on Tuesday morning.

He saw the two men burned, trapped inside the car. The driver thrust his hand out the window and waving it frantically, said Mr. Rahmani, with two other men pulled the driver from the car.

"We threw him in the canal water to kill fire to his body," Mr. Rahmani said. But the passengers, he said, can not be rescued.

Bombing comes a day after the 16 Afghan National Police officers were killed in separate attacks on two police Checkpoints, one of Northeastern Afghanistan and others in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, south. The Interior Ministry reported that eight officers were killed in each attack.

In southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, an improvised explosive device killed an American service member, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force reported.