A suicide bomb attack killed at least six foreigners and several Afghan civilians in Kabul on Thursday.

The bomber reportedly struck a NATO convoy. John Manley, a spokesman for the NATO-led international coalition, said that the foreigners killed included two troops and four civilian contractors.

The total death toll stood at 12.

Two children were also among the dead, according to the Associated Press.

The AP later reported that 2 US troops were among the six foreigners, adding that the attacker rammed a car packed with explosives into the convoy as it passed the home of an Afghan lawmaker.

The early-morning explosion happened in the Shah Shahid neighborhood, though the US Embassy in Kabul had not confirmed the attack.

The Wall Street Journal cited Police Chief Gen. Ayub Salangi as saying that he believed many of those killed were foreign troops.

Some of the bodies of those killed were so badly charred that neither their gender, nor their nationality was immediately clear, reports said.

Footage of the scene reportedly showed the road scattered with debris and mangled vehicles as emergency workers tended to the injured.

While most attacks in Kabul are linked to the Taliban, Thursday's attack was claimed by the smaller Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militant group, led by a local warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the The Journal wrote.

The Journal quoted him as saying:

"We have been following these vehicles for over a week. We don't have any problems with the Afghans, and we are not targeting them. We are targeting the foreigners."

The group had previously claimed an attack in Kabul on a minivan carrying crew from an aviation company contracted by the US Embassy, which killed at least 12 people.

The Post cited a Kabul police spokesman as saying Thursday's blast was so powerful "it set the nearby office buildings ablaze."

GlobalPost