Kabul -- A suicide car bomber has struck a bus carrying employees of Afghanistan’s top court in Kabul, killing at least 17 people and wounding 40 others, officials say.

Women and children were among the victims in Tuesday’s blast, the interior ministry said.

General Mohammad Zahir, the ministry’s head of criminal investigations, said the bomber detonated his vehicle after targeting the bus carrying Supreme Court staff near the US embassy.

The blast happened on the main road to the international airport, a few hundred metres from the US embassy gates. The gates are quite a distance from the actual embassy building and also from nearby NATO headquarters.

The area has a number of military facilities belonging to the US-led coalition.

"The target was tree minivans full of Supreme Court employees. Eyewitnesses told us there were deaths at the site itself,” Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said.

"Security forces cordoned off the site and were concerned about a lot of other vehicles already parked in the neighbourhood. A lot of windows were blown out of apartments surrounding the area.”

Several Taliban fighters were killed on Monday after launching a gun and grenade attack on military buildings near Kabul airport’s perimeter fence.

The response from Afghan security forces was widely praised as a sign of their growing professionalism as they take over responsibility from 100,000 US-led foreign combat troops who will pull out by the end of next year.

Kabul also came under attack on May 24, when the Taliban launched a coordinated suicide and gun assault on a compound of the International Organisation for Migration.

Agencies