As it happened: Dozens dead in suicide bombings outside Kabul international airport; Joe Biden vows revenge

That’s all for our live coverage of the Thursday night suicide attacks at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai’s International Airport.

Here’s what we know so far:

• The death toll from the twin bombings at the Abbey Gate at the airport and the adjacent Baron Hotel claimed the lives of at least 95 Afghans, including 28 Taliban, and 13 US servicemen, including 10 US Marines, two soldiers and one Navy corpsman
• The explosions, which also wounded 18 other Americans and scores of Afghans, came as the United States and other Western nations rushed to complete the evacuation of tens of thousands of citizens and Afghan allies ahead of an August 31 deadline
• President Joe Biden vowed to complete the evacuation of American citizens and others from Afghanistan

• British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and General Frank McKenzie, the US Central Command chief, both said more attempted attacks were expected
• The UK it has finished its evacuations and will not process any more people in Afghanistan
• IS-Khorasan, the Islamic State’s Afghanistan and Pakistan arm, took responsibility for the attack in a statement
• The Australian evacuation mission in Afghanistan has ended following the deadly explosion
• Australia managed to get all its Defence and Foreign Affairs staff out of Afghanistan on Thursday night, shortly before the bombing

US forces helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee Taliban rule were on alert for more attacks on Friday, Reuters reported.

British forces have entered the final stages of evacuating people from Kabul’s airport and processing facilities have closed, Britain’s Defence Ministry said.

The effort would now focus on evacuating British nationals and others who have already been cleared to leave and are already at the airport.

No further people would be called forward to the airport for evacuation, it said.

“It is with deep regret that not everyone has been able to be evacuated during this process,” Defence Minister Ben Wallace said in a statement.

Warning: graphic content

Kabul: Thousands of anxious Afghans seeking a new future were once again massing at Kabul’s airport on Thursday, waiting to be frisked by the US Marine Corps at Abbey Gate. There were five days left before the departure of the Americans, five days to escape a nation suddenly under control of the Taliban.

But as the crowds pressed forward to the gate, their entry point to a new life, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt. A second explosion followed at the nearby Baron Hotel, then gunfire.

“People were burning alive, people could not breathe,” said one Afghan eyewitness, who was with his wife and other family members waiting for an evacuation flight.

The terrorist attacks around Kabul airport, killing scores of people, including at least 13 US marines, may not seem like the moment to consider what the longer-term consequences for American power might be. The more immediate humiliation of the US will fill the airwaves for weeks to come. But then what?

Doomsayers are on a justifiable roll. The Kabul catastrophe has exposed lacuna in American global leadership. Caricatures of the Biden administration as hapless will be hard to impossible to redraw. The President’s cognitive decline is being noted even by his own side; his Vice-President is fast becoming a Democratic Sarah Palin.

Biden’s planning for the Afghan retreat makes the Trump administration look like a model of competence. He has somehow made the disaster at the Mexican border into a template for the barrier around Kabul airport. Neither has been secured.

His “over the horizon” pitch – that his military can maintain security at a distance – looks increasingly absurd. If the point of occupying Afghanistan for 20 years was counterterrorism but that when the occupation ends, terrorism comes back – as it has – Biden’s retreat is at best a contradiction.

Soccer’s world governing body FIFA said it is negotiating the “extremely challenging” evacuation of soccer players and other athletes from Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover of power.

Islamic State suicide bombers killed scores of civilians and at least 13 US troops on Thursday, striking the Kabul airport where thousands of people have been trying to flee in the chaos after the takeover.

Last week, Afghan national team soccer player Zaki Anwari died in a fall from a US plane at Kabul airport as crowds of people seeking to flee Afghanistan thronged the airport since Taliban insurgents swept to power in the capital on Aug. 15.

“The FIFA President and Secretary General are following closely the situation and are working tirelessly with governments and relevant organisations to get those at risk out of Afghanistan,” a FIFA spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday.