Blast near U.S. base in Kabul wounds 9 NATO soldiers

KABUL (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded near a NATO convoy outside a U.S. military base in Kabul on Friday, injuring nine foreign soldiers, as well as several civilian contractors and Afghan bystanders, the NATO-led force said.

In a statement, the NATO-led force said 10 civilian contractors were wounded in the attack but did not identify their nationalities.

The head of criminal investigations for Kabul police, Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, said a suicide bomber drove his car into a convoy of civilian vehicles just outside Camp Phoenix, a large U.S. military base near the Afghan capital's airport.

He said three to four foreign casualties had been taken from the scene by Western troops, but gave no details of the extent of their injuries.

In a text message to Reuters, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Islamist militant group was responsible for the attack.

The NATO-led force said none of its soldiers was killed.

A damaged white civilian vehicle could be seen at the debris-strewn blast site on a main road about 100 meters from Camp Phoenix on Jalalabad road.

Witnesses said a second civilian vehicle destroyed in the blast had been removed, while U.S. troops in armored vehicles blocked off the site.

"We were having breakfast when we heard a huge bang. All the glass was shattered," said Abdul Jamil, a worker at a petrol station across the street from the site.

Violence in Afghanistan this year has reached the worst levels of the eight-year-old war, and militants have staged a number of attacks in the capital in recent months.

(Additional reporting by Saeed Achakzai in Chaman, Pakistan)

(Reporting by Peter Graff, Yousuf Azimy and Hamid Shalizi; writing by Peter Graff and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Ron Popeski)