At least 17 people killed in Afghanistan blast

A wounded man is assisted at the site of an explosion in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

A bomb hidden in an ambulance has killed at least 17 people and wounded about 110 at a police checkpoint in the Afghan capital Kabul in an area near foreign embassies and government buildings.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the blast, a week after it claimed an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in which more than 20 people were killed.

"It is a massacre," said Dejan Panic co-ordinator in Afghanistan for the Italian aid group Emergency, which runs a nearby trauma hospital.

Uniformed and plainclothed Afghan security forces patrol the site of a deadly suicide attack in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

In a message on Twitter, the group said more than 50 wounded had been brought in to that hospital alone.

A spokesman from the public health ministry said on Saturday afternoon 17 dead and 110 wounded had been brought to city hospitals and victims were still being brought in.