People carry an injured man to a hospital after a blast in Kabul, Afghanistan January 27. (Photo: Reuters)

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide blast, a week after they claimed an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in which more than 20 people were killed.

An interior ministry spokesman blamed the Haqqani network, a militant group affiliated with the Taliban which Afghan and Western officials consider to be behind many of the biggest attacks on urban targets in Afghanistan.

As medical teams struggled to handle the casualties pouring in, some of the wounded were laid out in the open, with intravenous drips set up next to them in hospital gardens.

The latest attack will add pressure on President Ashraf Ghani and his US allies, who have expressed growing confidence that a new more aggressive military strategy has succeeded in driving Taliban insurgents back from major provincial centers.

Saturday is a working day in Afghanistan and the streets were full when the blast went off at around lunchtime in a busy part of the city close to shops and markets and near a number of foreign embassies and government buildings.

Buildings hundreds of meters away were shaken by the force of the blast, which left torn bodies strewn on the street amid piles of rubble, debris and wrecked cars.

The casualty toll is the worst since 150 people were killed in a truck bomb explosion last May near the German embassy, an attack that prompted a major reinforcement of security aimed at preventing similar vehicle-borne attacks.