At least 40 people killed and 140 wounded after a Taliban suicide attacker drives ambulance through checkpoint and sets off bomb near embassies and police headquarters in the Afghan capital (14 Pics)

A bomb hidden in an ambulance killed 40 people and wounded about 140 at a police checkpoint in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, in an area near foreign embassies and government buildings, the ministry of public health said.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the blast, which came a week after an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in which more than 20 people were killed.

“It is a massacre,” said Dejan Panic coordinator in Afghanistan for the Italian aid group Emergency, which runs a nearby trauma hospital. In a message on Twitter, the group said more than 50 wounded had been brought in to that hospital alone.

Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament who was nearby when the explosion occurred, said the ambulance approached the checkpoint, close to an office of the High Peace Council and several foreign embassies, and blew up.

He said a number of people were lying on the ground.

“The suicide bomber used an ambulance to pass through the checkpoints. He passed through the first checkpoint saying he was taking a patient to Jamuriate hospital and at the second checkpoint he was recognised and blew his explosive-laden car,” interior ministry deputy spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told AFP.

A plume of grey smoke rose from the blast area in the city centre and buildings hundreds of metres away were shaken by the force of the explosion.

An AFP reporter said he saw “lots of dead and wounded” people in a nearby hospital. A popular stationery market was near the site of the blast, the force of which shattered windows of surrounding buildings and caused some low-rise structures to collapse.

In chaotic scenes at the Jamuriate hospital, which is the nearest medical facility to the blast, overwhelmed doctors and nurses rushed to treat dozens of wounded lying in the corridors.

Outside civilians walked through debris-covered streets carrying wounded people on their backs as paramedics loaded several bodies at a time into ambulances to take them to medical facilities around the city.

The security alert issued to foreigners on Saturday morning warned that the Islamic State group, which has terrorised the city in recent months, was planning “to conduct aggressive attacks” on supermarkets, shops and hotels frequented by foreigners.

The latest attack will add pressure on Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and his US allies, who have expressed growing confidence that a new, more aggressive military strategy has succeeded in driving Taliban insurgents back from major provincial centres.

The United States has stepped up its assistance to Afghan security forces and increased its air strikes against the Taliban and other militant groups, aiming to break a stalemate and force the insurgents to the negotiating table.

However, the Taliban have dismissed suggestions that they have been weakened by the new strategy and the latest attacks have demonstrated that their capacity to mount deadly, high- profile attacks remains undiminished.