KABUL (New York Times) — Five days before Afghanistan’s presidential election, a huge explosion rocked the diplomatic district of the capital on Saturday morning, killing seven people and wounding 91, most of them on their way to work.

The blast in Kabul, attributed to a suicide car bomber, occurred about 8:30 a.m. just outside NATO forces’ headquarters and the Afghan transportation ministry. The blast was also near the United States Embassy, but an embassy spokeswoman said there were no injuries or damage at the well-guarded compound.
The brunt of the explosion was borne by civilian workers at the transportation ministry and Afghan Army guards at the entrance to the headquarters where Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force and all coalition forces in Afghanistan, has his offices.
The defense ministry put the death toll at seven people. Among the wounded were four Afghan soldiers and a female member of Parliament, Hawa Alam Nuristani, a statement from the ministry said. The Interior Ministry and eyewitnesses said the bomber was driving a Toyota station wagon and rammed a Land Cruiser S.U.V. containing foreign personnel as it was leaving I.S.A.F. headquarters, causing the explosion.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast. “The target was the U.S. embassy, but we could not reach it. The suicide car bomber exploded the bomb near the I.S.A.F. headquarters and killed several foreign troops,” the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is seeking re-election on Thursday, and the Taliban have accelerated a campaign of violence aimed at disrupting the voting.
At the scene of the explosion, Sayed Abdul Ghaffar, a police official, gave slightly lower casualty figures, but said the figures might rise because some of the wounded were in critical condition.
Mr. Ghaffar said that most of the victims were civilians but some were members of the military. A spokesman for the NATO-led force, Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, confirmed that there were military casualties but did not say how many.
A driver for the transportation ministry, Abdul Raqib, 35, said that at the time of the blast he was inside the ministry building, where some people were injured by flying glass. He took four of the wounded to waiting ambulances in his own car, he said.
The blast occurred in one of the city’s most heavily guarded streets, which runs between the United States Embassy and the presidential palace. The embassy is about 100 yards from the site of the explosion, but heavy barriers and blast walls protect it from the street. The palace is about 200 yards away in the opposite direction. The north end of the street is closed around the embassy, but the south end is open to allow access for Afghans working in several government buildings.
An embassy spokeswoman, Fleur Cowan, said that the blast did not affect the embassy and none of its staff were hurt. “We are still gathering information, but to the best of our knowledge all embassy staff are accounted for,” she said. Saturday is not a full working day at the embassy, and local staff who were coming in had arrived already, she said.
Photo: Civilians were evacuated from the scene of a suicide car bomb in front of the main gate of ISAF headquarters Saturday morning in Kabul, Afghanistan. (NYT/ Tyler Hicks)-