No US soldiers killed in Kabul attack, US says, correcting its earlier statement.

A suicide car bombing near an American military base in the Afghan capital Kabul has killed at least two people, including a child, officials say.

The US military initially said two soldiers had been killed, but later corrected the report to say five soldiers were among the injured.

The attack was carried out on a small road between US base Camp Eggers and the German embassy.

A fuel tanker and several cars were burning as the injured were taken away.

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says an eyewitness saw a suicide car bomber launch the attack.

The Taleban have reportedly claimed responsibility for Saturday morning's blast in the central district of Wazir Akbar Khan.

'Screaming'

The AP news agency said a spokesman for the militant group, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed a suicide bomber had carried out the attack in a Toyota Corolla.

Early reports said two US soldiers had died and four US soldiers had received non-life threatening injuries from shattered glass and debris, and that parts of the embassy had caught fire.

However, the military spokesman later said that toll was based on information which had not been verified and that no soldiers had died.

The US base is the headquarters for soldiers training Afghan police and army forces.

Dozens of armed Afghan security personnel guard the narrow street and blast walls of concrete and sand-filled mesh-wire boxes line the road.

Reuters news agency reported that relatives of the dead had gathered outside a nearby hospital.

A middle-aged woman was beating her head and screaming that her son had died and another man was crying, saying his son had also been killed.

Despite the heavy security in the district, which houses many embassies and offices of international organisations, the district has been attacked before.

In November, four Afghans died in another blast nearby, outside the American embassy.

The militants' influence has spread from their traditional heartlands in the south and east to areas closer to the capital.

But our correspondent says that with increased police checkpoints throughout the city, there were fewer attacks inside Kabul in 2008 than in the previous year.

US President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy priority after he comes to office on Tuesday and is expected to approve the doubling of US troops in the country from the 30,000 at present.