At least nine foreign civilian workers and several Afghans were killed in a car bomb suicide attack which militants said was revenge for an American-made anti-Islam film.
Everyone inside the minibus was killed along with several Afghans nearby. Gen Daud Amin, deputy police chief for Kabul, said the nine foreigners were killed in the minibus along with their Afghan driver.
The dead included South Africans and Russians.
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The power of the blast in front of a filling station blew the wreckage of the minibus 40 yards from the point of impact. Only the engine block remained from the car carrying the bomb.
Witnesses said at least two of the bodies in the wreckage appeared to be foreign women. Police at the scene said the victims were civilian aviation staff at the nearby airport, but they did not disclose their nationalities.
The blast was claimed by Hizb-i Islami, an insurgent faction led by the former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
A statement emailed to journalists said it had been carried out in reprisal for the film "The Innocence of Muslims", which ridicules the Prophet Mohammed and has sparked outrage across the Muslim world since a trailer emerged on YouTube.
The statement claimed the bomber was a 22-year-old woman called Fahima. Police at the scene said they had only found the bomber's legs and it was impossible to tell if they belonged to a man or woman.
Hekmatyar led the largest anti-Soviet Mujahideen faction during the 1980s and later became Prime Minister. He is now chiefly remembered for the brutality of his fighters during the country's civil war and the indiscriminate rocket barrages his forces unleashed on Kabul in the early 1990s.
His faction is considered less powerful than the Taliban, though they share the aims of removing foreign forces from the country and ousting Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.
The explosion struck the minibus at around 6.45am at an Etifaq filling station, next to the Khalij Wedding Hall on the airport road.
Sherzad, an 18-year-old who sells fruit from a cart nearby, said: "The explosion was huge. At first we thought one of the petrol tanks had blown up." He said a man and his son who had a roadside business inflating tyres were also killed. Casualties would have been far higher if the blast had been later in the morning he said.
Two glass-fronted wedding halls nearby had both had most of their windows smashed.
The blast came a day after hundreds of protestors chanted "Death to America!" and hurled rocks at police in Eastern Kabul in protest at the film.
Taliban fighters claimed their weekend attack on Camp Bastion in Helmand, was also in revenge for the film. The attack destroyed millions of dollars' worth of coalition aircraft.
Edited By Cen Fox Post Team
