KABUL, Afghanistan  A suicide car bomber struck outside a hotel popular with foreigners on Tuesday, killing at least 8 people and wounding 40 others, the Afghan authorities said. Four women were among the dead, according to the Interior Ministry.

The explosion occurred just outside the hotel and several buildings owned by a former Afghan vice president, Ahmed Zia Massoud, who may have been the target. Mr. Massoud is the brother of the guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who battled Soviet forces during the 1980s and was assassinated by a suicide bomber on Sept. 9, 2001, two days before the terrorist attacks against the United States.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said during a televised speech at a conference on corruption on Tuesday that two of Mr. Massoud’s bodyguards had been killed.

An aide said that Mr. Massoud was unharmed, and that he believed the target might have been the Heetal Hotel, which is owned by relatives of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and mujahedeen leader.