Da'sh suicide bombers kill scores at Kabul airport

KABUL: Twin suicide bombs ripped through crowds outside Kabul airport on Thursday, killing scores of people including 13 US troops and deepening panic in the final days of an already frenzied evacuation effort from Talibancontrolled Afghanistan.

The bombings, claimed by the Da'esh terrorist group, left scenes of carnage outside the airport where thousands of Afghans desperate to flee their country had massed despite a flurry of foreign government warnings-made just hours before-that a major terror attack was imminent.

President Joe Biden, under enormous pressure over his administration's handling of the Afghan crisis, said the airlift would not be derailed and vowed to punish those responsible.

"We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay," he said.

However Biden also insisted all American troops must leave Afghanistan and the airlift will end by Tuesday, partly due to the threat of more terror attacks.

More than 100,000 people have been flown out of Afghanistan since the Taliban swept into power on August 15. The Taliban had allowed US-led forces to conduct the airlift, while planning to finalise their own government as soon as the American troops left.

But the Da'esh militants, rivals of the Taliban with their own track record of barbaric attacks in Afghanistan, were intent on capitalising on the chaos in Kabul. The suicide bombers targeted people trying to reach access gates at the airport, creating scenes of terror and devastation.

Footage shared on social media showed men and women in a tangled mess in the shin-deep water of a drainage canal.

Stunned survivors pulled themselves to their feet, while others desperately shouted for help in searching the carnage for loved ones.

The Italian NGO Emergency said the hospital it operates in Kabul had been overwhelmed by a "massive influx" of 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.

A witness to one of the bombings told AFP he had applied for a visa to the United States, but in the confusion dropped the documents he hoped would help him board a flight with his wife and three children. "I will never, ever want to go (to the airport) again. Death to America, its evacuation and visas," he said.

The deaths of the 13 American troops were the worst single-day death toll for the US military in Afghanistan since 2011.

A clearly shaken Biden went before TV cameras to address the American people about the attacks, describing the killed US troops as heroes.

Asked by a reporter if he bore any responsibility for the deaths, Biden said: "I bear responsibility fundamentally for all that's happened of late".