Twin suicide bombs ripped through crowds outside Kabul airport on Thursday, killing at least 85 people including 13 US troops, and deepening panic in the final days of an already frenzied evacuation effort from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The bombings, claimed by the Islamic State group, left scenes of carnage outside the airport where thousands of Afghans desperate to flee their country had massed.
They had swarmed around the airport despite a flurry of foreign government warnings—made just hours before—that a major terror attack was imminent.
The attackers targeted people trying to reach access gates at the airport, creating scenes of terror and devastation.
At least 72 people among the crowd were killed, as well as the 13 American troops, according to various authorities.
Wounded people in blood-soaked clothes were ferried away in wheelbarrows, as stunned survivors desperately shouted while looking for loved ones in the carnage.
One man held a semi-conscious victim by the elbow, trying to stop his head from slipping beneath the surface of the murky water.
The Italian NGO Emergency said the hospital it operates in Kabul had been overwhelmed by more than 60 casualties, 16 of whom were pronounced dead on arrival.
The injured "could not speak, many were terrified, their eyes totally lost in emptiness, their gaze blank", the hospital's medical coordinator Alberto Zanin said in a post on the group's Twitter account.
General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the US Central Command, said more Islamic State attacks were expected in Kabul.
The Taliban, which condemned the blasts, emphasised they happened in an area under US military control.
The US government and its allies had raised the alarm earlier in the day with a series of advisories warning their citizens to avoid the airport.
The United Nations called an urgent meeting of the permanent members of the Security Council for Monday.
In recent years, the Islamic State's Afghanistan-Pakistan chapter has been responsible for some of the deadliest attacks in those countries.
It has massacred civilians at mosques, shrines, public squares, and even hospitals.
But while IS and the Taliban are both hardline Sunni Islamist militants, they oppose each other.
"These are people that are even more extreme than the Taliban and are basically at war with the Taliban. So it is a horribly complex situation," Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said.
The Taliban have promised a softer brand of rule compared with their first stint in power, which ended in 2001 when the United States invaded because they gave sanctuary to Al-Qaeda.
But many Afghans fear a repeat of the Taliban's brutal interpretation of Islamic law, as well as violent retribution for working with foreign militaries, Western missions, or the previous US-backed government.
