A powerful car bomb exploded in the busy business district of the Afghan capital Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and possibly many more, police said. One senior police officer blamed Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and Afghanistan's ousted Taliban rulers, who once sheltered bin Laden and his supporters. Witnesses said thousands of people fled the busy central business district after the blast near the information ministry there at 2.55 p.m. local time.

The deputy police chief for Kabul, Mohammad Khalil, was quick to blame al Qaeda, the Taliban and an exiled former guerrilla chief and prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

"Hekmatyar, the Taliban and al Qaeda have revealed their black faces again," he said. "Was this a military place? Was this a place of the Americans?" he asked, referring to the U.S. forces who helped topple the Taliban and are hunting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Khalil gave a toll of 10 dead and 16 wounded, including two policemen.

Earlier, another police officer gave a higher toll. "My forces evacuated more than 22 bodies and more than 20 wounded," Police Colonel Abdullah told Reuters.

Residents said the explosion was the worst in Kabul since the Western-supported government of President Hamid Karzai came to power following the overthrow of the hard-line Islamic Taliban last year.

A Reuters correspondent at the scene saw more than 15 wounded people after the blast. The wounded included men and women.

"It's a chaotic scene, people are running everywhere," said Reuters correspondent at the scene, Sayed Salahuddin.

"I can see pieces of flesh on the road and the pavement. There are sandals and pieces of clothing everywhere. I can see hundreds and hundreds of glass windows shattered in nearby buildings."

Several dozen soldiers were seen examining a wrecked taxi in which the device was thought to have been planted.

Among the wounded were officials of the Ministry of Information, some 50 meters (yards) from the site of the blast, who were cut by flying glass.

Khalil said there was a small explosion from a bicycle, followed by a massive explosion of the nearby car. Witnesses told Reuters they heard a small blast first followed by a big explosion.

Khalil said peacekeepers from the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul were assisting in the investigation into the explosion.

A U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban for sheltering bin Laden and his al Qaeda group, which Washington blamed for the suicide plane hijackings that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States last September 11.

PHOTO CAPTION

A victim of a bomb blast in the Afghan capital of Kabul is helped by a doctor as he arrives at a hospital in Kabul September 5, 2002. More than 22 people were killed and dozens wounded when a powerful bomb exploded in the busy central business district of the Afghan capital on Thursday, police said. (Darren Whiteside/Re