KABUL, Dec 5: A suicide attacker slammed a bomb-filled car into an Afghan army bus in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people in the second such blast in two days during a visit by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

Taliban 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 violence.

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 soldiers and eight civilians were killed according to information given to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), spokesman Brigadier General Carlos Branco told reporters.

Defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahid Azimi said six soldiers and seven civilians were confirmed dead.

Up to 20 civilians may have been killed, many of them children, but information was still being verified, another ministry official said.

Four of the dead were children, health ministry spokesman Abudullah Fahim said. Seventeen people were treated in hospital.—AFP