At least one person was killed and more than a dozen others wounded when a suicide car bomber struck near a hotel favored by Westerners in a heavily guarded neighborhood of Kabul on Tuesday, officials and witnesses said.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, confirmed the suicide attack. One Afghan civilian was killed and 16 other people with injuries were transferred to a hospital, the ministry said. Several hotel guards at the scene suffered cuts to their faces.

The Heetal Hotel, which is owned by the son of Burhanuddin Rabbani, who served as president of Afghanistan from 1992 until 1996, was damaged by the midmorning blast, in the capital city’s Wazir Akbar Khan district.

No hotel customers were injured, said an Afghan intelligence official in charge of security for the hotel. The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to provide information about the blast, said he did not think the hotel was the target because the explosion occurred about 30 meters from the entrance to the hotel. When the explosion occurred, the official, who suffered cuts to his face, was standing in the front of the hotel.

(article and photo source: The Associated Press)