Blast near Kabul airport

A powerful blast tore through crowds near the southern wall of the Hamid Karzai International airport in Kabul on Thursday, killing scores of civilians and at least 13 U.S. troops.

U.S. troops helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee Taliban rule braced for more attacks on Friday after Islamic State struck the crowded airport gates. A Kabul health official and a Taliban official said 72 civilians were killed.

Some U.S. media including the New York Times cited local health officials as saying as many as 170 people, not including the U.S. troops, had died in the attack.

Video shot by Afghan journalists showed dozens of bodies strewn around a canal on the edge of the airport.

The Pentagon said on Friday that the attack was carried out by one suicide bomber, not two as earlier thought.

The attack occurred near the Abbey Gate entrance to the airport which is near the Baron Hotel, a 160-room luxury hotel most recently used as an evacuation spot by the U.S. military. The hotel is about 200 metres away from the airport’s boundary wall.

In a statement, Islamic State claimed responsibility and said one of its suicide bombers had targeted “translators and collaborators with the American army.”

Other choke points

General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said U.S. commanders were on alert for more attacks by Islamic State, including possibly rockets or vehicle-borne bombs targeting the airport.

“We’re doing everything we can to be prepared,” he said.

Crowded entrances and security checkpoints could be at risk of further attacks. Satellite imagery and photos on the ground show crowds gathering elsewhere around the airport perimeter, in the hope of being let in.

Kabul has endured frequent suicide attacks in the 20 years since the Taliban were first driven from power, and the city’s residents have grown used to police and security teams sealing off the blast sites and carrying away the dead and wounded.

Who is ISIS-K?

Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), named after an old term for the region, first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in late 2014 and quickly established a reputation for extreme brutality.

Some experts on Islamist militancy in the region say it was founded by hardline elements of the Pakistani Taliban who fled into Afghanistan when Pakistan security forces cracked down on them.

They have fought both the Western-backed government and the Taliban, but its precise operational connection with the main Islamic State movement in Iraq and Syria remains uncertain.

Due to Afghanistan’s complex ethnic groups, rugged terrain and historical instability, a large number of groups have engaged in militant activity within its borders. While they don’t hold control over the regions, groups like al Qaeda and Haqqani network have a presence in the country.

According to an August 2021, U.S. Congressional Research Service report, the ISIS-K and the Taliban have “sometimes fought over control of territory or because of political or other differences.”

U.S. President Joe Biden said he had ordered the Pentagon to plan how to strike ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility.

“We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said during televised comments from the White House.

U.S. forces are racing to complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan by an Aug. 31 deadline set by Biden, who says the United States had long fulfilled its original objective for invading the country in 2001: to root out al Qaeda militants and prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.