Kabul Blast Sounds Alarms At US Embassy In Afghanistan

UPDATE, 3:05 p.m. EDT: The Taliban denied the group was behind or involved in Saturday's attack in Kabul that killed 14 people and left 60 others wounded, CBS News Kabul-based correspondent Ahmad Mukhtar reported. "We are investigating who carried out the attack," he quoted the group as saying.

UPDATE, 10:37 a.m. EDT: At least 10 people are dead and 60 injured in an explosion that rocked the diplomatic area of Kabul, Afghanistan, police said, according to BBC News. Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Wahidullah Mayar confirmed the number of dead, Reuters reported.

Original story below.

A blast believed to be a car-bomb explosion in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul has triggered alarms at the U.S. embassy, according to reports Saturday morning. The blast was heard in the diplomatic quarter of the city, unnamed witnesses told Reuters. BBC News reported at least 13 people were injured by the explosion. And a number of reports indicated there could be as many as three dead and 27 injured.

Police said the large blast happened in a busy residential area of Kabul close to government offices on a road regularly used by government officials and security convoys, BBC News reported.

The explosion happened near the U.S. embassy and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, according to Al Jazeera, which added there was no immediate confirmation of its cause. A number of Afghan Twitter users and journalists reporting from the city said alarms could be heard ringing in the area. The embassy sounded its emergency sirens as loudspeakers broadcast a “duck and cover” alarm warning, Reuters reported.

Agence France-Presse also noted via Twitter the “powerful” blast in Kabul. The city recently has been at the center of a number of attacks launched by the Taliban.

Stars and Stripes’ foreign correspondent Josh Smith reported via Twitter that a NATO coalition has said it is “aware” of the attack in Kabul and is still “gathering information. ... Police [and] witnesses say it targeted foreign convoy.”

“There has been an explosion in the Fourth Macroyan residential neighborhood of Kabul city,” Fraidoon Obaidi, the head of Kabul’s Criminal Investigation Department, told AFP, according to a Reuters report. “We are investigating the nature of the bombing.”

A video showing scenes in the city after the attack was posted by Afghanistan’s 1TV Kabul. The station called the cause of the blast a “suicide bomb” and reported that eight people were killed in the explosion.

This is a breaking-news story.