US commanders are on alert for more attacks by the so-called Islamic State, including possible rockets or vehicle-borne bombs targeting Kabul airport, the head of US Central Command General Frank McKenzie said.

"We're doing everything we can to be prepared," said General McKenzie, as US forces race to complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US is racing to complete evacuations by a 31 August deadline agreed with the Taliban. US President Joe Biden has not extended this deadline.

On Thursday evening he said that evacuation efforts would continue despite the attacks.

He also vowed revenge on Thursday's attackers, adding that he had ordered the Pentagon to plan how to strike ISIS-K, the regional faction of the group that has claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts that killed at least 60 people on Thursday.

The Islamic State reportedly said one of its suicide bombers had targeted "translators and collaborators with the American army", according to a Reuters report.

Image source, Getty Images

Two powerful bomb blasts struck the perimeter of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport on Thursday, killing at least 60 people at wounding 140 others.

Grieving families, injured in hospitals...these are some of the images that have emerged in the aftermath of the attack.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the attacks at the Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul on Thursday.

"These heinous attacks took the lives of many innocent people desperately seeking to leave the country and those supporting evacuation efforts, including US service members and medical personnel," he said.

“Our thoughts are with the people of Afghanistan, and everyone affected by these senseless acts of violence. We offer our condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims, and wish a full recovery to those who were injured."

His comments come as Canada ended its evacuation mission out of Afghanistan. It is not clear how many Canadians still remain in the country.

Mr Trudeau, who is seeking re-election next month, has promised to resettle 20,000 Afghans in Canada in the coming "months and years".

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

It's now 6am in Afghanistan.

People are waking up to a grim morning, hours after deadly bomb blasts at the Kabul airport yesterday.

There was already a growing sense of fear and uncertainty when the US announced it was pulling out of Afghanistan, heightened after the Taliban marched into the capital, Kabul, and took control of the country.

Over the past few days, we saw tens of thousands of people swarming to Kabul airport desperate to leave the country ahead of the 31 August deadline for US forces to leave.

But on Thursday afternoon, two explosions hit the airport - killing more than 60 people. The blasts took place in. crowded area where people were waiting to have their documents processed.

Social media has been filled with posts of grief, while eye-witnesses have spoken of the bloody scenes at the airport.

At least 140 people were also wounded in the attack, which a regional faction of the so-called Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for.

US President Joe Biden says the country will complete its mission to evacuate people - and has also vowed revenge on the attackers.

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

The threat from Isis-K, the regional branch of Islamic State, still remains high, said the head of US Central Command.

Australia’s prime minister has just held a press conference where his government condemned the Kabul airport blasts as “evil, calculated and inhumane attacks on the innocent and the brave”.

Scott Morrison in particular expressed sadness for the reported 13 American soldiers who were killed at Abbey Gate – “a gate at which Australian personnel stood just hours before”.

“These brave young Americans stood at that gate to protect life, to save lives but lost their own in providing a pathway to freedom for others,” he said.

He thanked the US and UK forces in control at the airport before confirming that Australia had completed its evacuation efforts and would cease its on-the-ground operations.

Canberra has evacuated more than 4,100 people over the past nine days including citizens and Afghans with Australian visas.

Mr Morrison's government has resisted some calls to offer a 20,000 spot asylum programme like the UK and Canada. On Friday the prime minister re-iterated that future Afghan arrivals would only come into Australia through the UN refugee programme.

Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) has said it was behind the twin blasts at the Kabul airport that killed 60 and injured around 140 people.

But who is this group and what are their objectives?

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardiner says the group is the most extreme and violent of all the jihadist militant groups in Afghanistan.

It is a regional affiliate of the group calling itself Islamic State and is active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The group has been blamed for some of the worst atrocities in recent years, targeting girls' schools, hospitals, and even a maternity ward pregnant women, infants, and nurses were shot dead.

They are part of the global IS network that seeks to carry out attacks on western, international and humanitarian targets wherever they can reach them.

ISIS-K have links to the Taliban through a third party, the Haqqani network.

But they have major differences with the Taliban, accusing them of abandoning Jihad and the battlefield in favour of a negotiated peace settlement.

IS fighters now represent a major security challenge for the incoming Taliban government.

An ex-Royal Marine who was near to the explosions outside Kabul airport has told how "all hell broke loose" as gunmen fired near his vehicle.

"All hell broke loose at the airport circle which is where I was, which is probably about a mile from the explosions across at the Abbey Gate and we had Taliban there firing into the air," Paul Farthing told the BBC.

"One let off a full magazine on automatic from his AK-47 right next to the window of our bus where we had women and children in.

And as we were trying to then flee from the airport we were getting tear-gassed so we were obviously trying to drive the vehicle when we can't see anything. It was just the most horrific thing."

Mr Farthing, who founded the Nowzad animal shelter, has been campaigning to have his staff and their families, as well as 140 dogs and 60 cats, evacuated from Kabul since the collapse of the Afghan government.

Read more about Mr Farthing's experience here

"Look at my clothes they are all bloodied".

These are some eyewitness reactions in the aftermath of the Kabul airport bombings which have killed at least 60 people, including 13 US military personnel.

Hours earlier, Western governments had warned their citizens to stay away from the airport because of an imminent threat of an attack by IS-K, the Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State group.

Image source, AFP

Like millions of other Afghans, the country's Uyghurs are waking up to a different reality, one in which the Taliban is in charge. But they also fear something else: greater influence for China.

There are about 12 million Uyghurs in China. Since 2017, they and other Muslim minorities have been subjected to a state campaign of mass detention, surveillance, forced labour, and, according to some accounts, sterilisation, torture and rape.

China denies all human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and says its camps are vocational centres designed to combat extremism.

But many of Afghanistan's Uyghurs fear that if China enters the vacuum left by the US, they could be targeted.

Read more from some of the Uyghur community in Afghanistan here.

Image source, EPA

As we move into Friday in Afghanistan, here's a recap of the main developments over the past 24 hours:

• At least 60 people were killed and 140 injured in twin blasts at Kabul airport - an Afghan health official tells the BBC
• Thirteen US military personnel are among those who died, the Pentagon confirms, in what is the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan since 2011
• Reacting to the attack, US President Joe Biden tells the perpetrators: "We will hunt you down and make you pay"
• He also vows to finish the US pullout, but admits that "getting everyone out is not guaranteed"
• The president says so far there is no evidence of collusion between the Taliban and the Islamic State, who claimed it was behind the attack
• Western leaders condemn the Kabul attack, as several nations are wrapping up their evacuation operations

Here's the warning President Joe Biden gave to the perpetrators of the Kabul attack.

"We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay," Biden vowed, hinting that the attackers may have come from prisons opened by the Taliban.

He also referred to the ISIS-K terror group, which had earlier said it was behind the twin blasts at the airport.

And Biden stressed that America "will not be deterred by terrorists".

"We will not stop the mission. We will continue the evacuation," he said.

Image source, EPA

Huge crowds of people fleeing Taliban rule have built up at Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, but so far we have not heard similar reports from the western border with Iran.

Iran has kept its official border crossings closed since 16 August, except for two used for trade, despite a call from the UN refugee agency to open them given the humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan.

“For now there has been no influx of refugees in Iran,” a UN spokeswoman told the BBC.

“We estimate that some 7,000 Afghans have newly arrived in Iran since June - though the numbers are likely much higher, given that most are crossing using informal border points.”

Iran was hosting 780,000 Afghan refugees as of October 2020, external. Additionally, some two million undocumented Afghans and almost 600,000 Afghan passport holders were living in the country.

Biden is asked to confirm reports that the US provided lists of names of evacuees to the Taliban, so they would be allowed entrance into the airport.

A Politico report from today quoted a US defence official as saying the US effectively provided a "kill list" of Afghans who had previously worked with the Americans.

Biden says that the US does co-ordinate with the Taliban on security matters, saying: "Yes, there may have been occasions like that."

"I can't tell you with any certitude that there was any list of names," handed over, he says, adding: "It very well have happened."

Joe Biden takes questions from the media.

He is asked whether the US military made a mistake in trusting the Taliban to handle security outside Kabul airport.

"No-one trusts them. We're just counting on their self-interest to continue to generate their activities," says the president.

"It's in their self-interest that we leave when we said, and that we get as many people out as we can."

He also says he has reason to know who the attackers are, adding "we will get them".

Image source, Re

More now from President Biden's address.

"To those that carried out this attack, as well as anyone else who wishes America harm know this:

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

He hints that the attackers may have come from prisons that were opened by the Taliban during their lightning conquest of Afghanistan.

He also refers to the ISIS-K terror group, which has taken credit for the attacks.

"We will not be deterred by terrorists. We will not stop the mission. We will continue the evacuation," he says, adding that the US will retaliate against today's attackers.

"We have so much to do. It's within our capacity to do it. We just have to remain steadfast. Steadfast," continues Biden.

"We will complete our mission and we will continue, after the troops are withdrawn, to define means by which we can find any American that wants to get out of Afghanistan.

"We will find them and we will get them out."

Image source, Reuters

Biden says American "hearts ache for all the Afghan families that lost people, including children, in this vicious attack".

"We are outraged as well as heartbroken," he says.

The president says "the situation on the ground is still evolving and I'm constantly being updated".

He goes on to praise the fallen soldiers, who he says were engaged "in a dangerous mission to save the lives of others".

Image source, White House

President Biden is now speaking about what he calls the "tough day" in Kabul.

He says the "terrorist" attack is of the type "that we have been talking about and worrying about".

The US president is set to speak shortly at the White House about the deadly attack on US forces and Afghan civilians at Kabul airport.

You can click on the play button at the top of the page to watch Biden, and we will bring you the important comments as they are made.