Suicide Blast rocks Indian Embassy in Kabul

A burqa-clad woman screamed and charred bodies littered the flesh-strewn road outside the Indian embassy in Kabul yesterday after a powerful suicide car bomb ripped through the building's outer walls. At least 41 people dead and nearly 150 others wounded.

India's foreign minister said from New Delhi that four Indians, including the military attache and a diplomat, died in the blast.

An official statement by the interior ministry only said that more than 100 people were killed and injured in the incident.

The blast was the worst in Kabul since the start of an Islamist insurgency launched after the hardline Taliban were toppled from government by US-led forces for harbouring the Al-Qaeda network after the 9/11 attacks.

President Hamid Karzai blamed the attack on militants trying to rupture the friendship between India and Afghanistan.