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At least 170 people were killed, thirteen of them American soldiers, and 150 others were wounded in the suicide terrorist attack perpetrated on Thursday by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) at the Kabul airport, according to sources close to the Taliban and health sources told EFE news agency on Friday.
So far the total number of dead is 170, including American soldiers, and there are at least 150 wounded, said a source close to the Taliban leaders, who requested anonymity.
The United States had announced that 13 American soldiers were killed in the attack and 18 others were wounded. The British government has also reported the death of British nationals.
The Wazir Akbar Khan hospital in the Afghan capital alone has received 145 lifeless bodies after the attack at the capital’s airport, and half a hundred are being treated for serious injuries, said health sources, who requested anonymity.
In addition, another 16 dead were counted at the hospital of the Italian NGO Emergency in Kabul, while some 40 patients were also admitted there with injuries from the blast, according to the same source.
However, the total number of victims of the attack remains uncertain in the absence of an official count.
When the Taliban came to power on August 15, following the fall of the Afghan government, public service offices and authorities stopped providing official information on the health situation in the country.
The medical coordinator of the Emergency hospital in Kabul, Alberto Zanin, reported that in the last few hours they have increased the number of beds from 100 to 115 to deal with this emergency.
“At the moment, there are only four free beds,” he wrote on Twitter, without specifying how many of the patients are victims of the attack.
Many of the victims are children, some very young, “arriving with injuries that were caused by shrapnel fragments or the blast waves and burns,” he recounted.
The NGO has also reported on the efforts of health workers, who have doubled shifts to deal with the situation after the blast.
