By Yousuf Azimy
KABUL (Reuters) - A large bomb exploded near the Indian embassy in the centre of the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing seven people and wounding 45, two police sources said.
The blast tore through a market building across the street from the heavily fortified embassy compound, leaving rubble and debris strewn across the road, where the Afghan Interior Ministry is also located.
Ambulances and other emergency vehicles rushed to the blast site.
A policeman at the scene told Reuters the bomb had been placed inside a car, but he could not say if it was a suicide attack.
"I was busy working when the blast happened. The windows were shattered, I ran into my tent," said a worker at a nearby building site.
The Indian embassy was the scene in July last year of the deadliest attack in the capital of the eight-year-old war, when a Taliban suicide car bomber killed 58 people, including two senior Indian diplomats, and wounded a further 141.
"As per reports we have received all embassy personnel are safe. There has been some damage to the embassy property. We are closely monitoring the situation," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said in New Delhi. He said it was too early to speculate who could be behind the attack.
Indian authorities blamed the Pakistani intelligence service for last year's blast.
Violence in Afghanistan has reached its worst levels of the war with Taliban insurgents spreading their attacks to previously secure areas. This year has also been the deadliest for Western troops in the country.
The mounting violence grips the country as U.S. President Barack Obama is considering whether to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan as requested by his top commander there, General Stanley McChrystal.
There are now more than 100,000 Western troops serving in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them American.
(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Jonathon Burch; writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Ron Popeski)
(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan)
