Kabul airport blasts: Death toll climbs to 90

At least 90 people are thought to have died so far and more than 150 injured as a result of Thursday's attacks on the Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul.

An official from the ministry of public health, who does not want to be identified, told the BBC that the number of people killed in yesterday's airport attack has risen to 90 people with more than 150 injured.

Islamic State struck the crowded gates of Kabul airport in a suicide bomb attack on Thursday, killing scores of civilians and 13 US troops, and throwing into mayhem the airlift of tens of thousands of afghans desperate to flee.

The US death toll, announced General Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, made it the deadliest single incident for American forces in Afghanistan in a decade and one of the deadliest of the entire 20-year war.

Video uploaded by Afghan journalists showed dozens of bodies and wounded victims strewn around a canal on the edge of the airport. At least two blasts rocked the area, witnesses said.

Islamic State, which has emerged in Afghanistan as enemies both of the West and the Taliban, claimed responsibility in a statement in which it said one of its suicide bombers targeted "translators and collaborators with the American army". US officials also blamed the group.

The US deaths were the first in action in Afghanistan in 18 months, a fact likely to be cited by critics who accuse President Joe Biden of recklessly abandoning a stable and hard-won status quo by ordering an abrupt pullout.

A ditch by the airport fence was filled with bloodsoaked corpses, some being fished out and laid in heaps on the canal side while wailing civilians searched for loved ones.

"For a moment I thought my eardrums were blasted and I lost my sense of hearing. I saw bodies and body parts flying in the air like a tornado blowing plastic bags. I saw bodies, body parts elders and injured men, women and children scattered in the blast site," said one Afghan who had been trying to reach the airport.

"Bodies and injured were lying on the road and the sewage canal. That little water flowing in the sewage canal had turned into blood."

McKenzie said the United States would press on with evacuations, noting that there were still around 1,000 US citizens in Afghanistan. But several Western countries said the mass airlift of Afghan civilians was coming to an end, likely to leave no way out for tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the West through two decades of war.

Violence by Islamic State is a challenge for the Taliban, who have promised Afghans they will bring peace to the country they swiftly conquered. A Taliban spokesman described the attack as the work of "evil circles" who would be suppressed once the foreign troops leave.

Western countries fear that the Taliban, who once sheltered Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, will allow Afghanistan to turn again into a haven for militants. The Taliban say they will not let the country be used by terrorists.