Eight people killed in Kabul car bomb

At least eight people have been killed and some 400 injured by a powerful car bomb in the Afghan capital Kabul early on Friday morning, health officials report.

Police say that the bomb went off in the Shah Shahid area of the city, and a security source told Reuters that the target was probably an army compound.

Injured people including children were reportedly rushed to hospital for treatment, but some bodies are feared buried in the wreckage of shops and businesses.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosion yet, however the Taliban are the main suspects.

The BBC adds that large truck bombs are unusual in the centre of Kabul, in part because police do not allow lorries to enter the city during the daytime, but smaller bombs and suicide attacks have become almost a weekly occurrence in the heavily fortified city.

On Thursday at least six people, including three policemen, were killed in a suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan, when a lorry filled with explosives was detonated outside a police compound in Puli Alam, capital of Logar province.

The Taliban claimed the bombing, the first major attack since the militants confirmed last week that their leader, Mullah Omar, had died. On Monday the Afghan Taliban released a video which they said showed members of the group pledging allegiance to the new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour.