The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Kabul

A suicide attacker slammed a bomb-filled car into an Afghan army bus in Kabul Wednesday, killing at least 16 people in the second such blast in two days during a visit by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

The extremist Taliban group claimed responsibility for the morning rush-hour bombing, which struck in the south of the Afghan capital as Gates wrapped up a short visit to assess efforts against an intensifying insurgency.

The bus was reduced to a blackened skeleton of mangled metal, its roof and sides blown out. "It was a big explosion and sent fire into the sky," said Akbari Sarwar, a journalist who was on the road when the blast hit. "When I moved in I saw scores of bodies, legs, arms, heads, flesh everywhere," he told AFP.

Eight Afghan National Army soldiers and eight civilians were killed according to information given to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, spokesman Brigadier General Carlos Branco told reporters.

Another defence ministry officials said on condition of anonymity that up to 20 civilians may have been killed, many of them children, but information was still being verified.

Four of the dead were children in their early teens, health ministry spokesman Abudullah Fahim said. Seventeen people were treated in hospital, he said.

The attack occurred as Gates ended a short trip to Afghanistan in which he held talks with President Hamid Karzai about the violence being led by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

A suicide attack that targeted the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on the first full day of his visit on Tuesday missed the foreign soldiers but wounded 22 Afghan civilians.