A Taliban official said at least 13 people including children had been killed. A surgical hospital run by an Italian charity said it was treating more than 60 wounded. The Pentagon said U.S. personnel were among those hurt.

Video images uploaded to the internet by an Afghan journalist showed a pile of bloodsoaked bodies in a street surrounded by debris. The man filming it was wailing.

“We can confirm that the explosion at the Abbey Gate was the result of a complex attack that resulted in a number of U.S. and civilian casualties. We can also confirm at least one other explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, a short distance from Abbey Gate,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said on Twitter.

The explosion took place amid crowds outside the airport, where desperate Afghans have been massing in hope of escaping in an airlift which the United States says will end by Tuesday following the swift capture of the country by the Taliban.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but Washington and its allies had been urging civilians to stay away from the airport on Thursday because of a threat of a suicide attack by Islamic State militants, enemies of both the West and the Taliban.

Western countries have evacuated nearly 100,000 people, mostly Afghans who helped them, in the past 12 days. But they acknowledge that thousands more will be left behind following President Joe Biden’s order to pull out all troops by Aug 31.

Several U.S. officials said the blast appeared to be a suicide attack. A witness in Kabul saw many wounded men, women and children waiting for treatment outside a hospital.

The Taliban official said many Taliban guards, who are securing the airport, were among the wounded.

“Our guards are also risking their lives at Kabul airport, they face a threat too from the Islamic State group,” said a Taliban official, speaking on condition of anonymity before the reports of the blasts.

Airlift Ending

The airlift for civilians is in its final days, with Washington saying it will use the last two days mainly to pull out its own troops. Allies that fought alongside U.S. forces for 20 years in Afghanistan have been wrapping up their own evacuations while publicly lamenting Washington’s haste in pulling out.

Canadian forces halted their evacuations of around 3,700 Canadian and Afghan citizens on Thursday, saying they had stayed as long as they could.

“We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone,” the acting chief of Canada’s defence staff, General Wayne Eyre, told reporters.

Biden ordered all troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the month to comply with a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban negotiated by his predecessor Donald Trump. He spurned calls from European allies for more time.

Islamic State

Fighters claiming allegiance to Islamic State began appearing in eastern Afghanistan at the end of 2014. They established a reputation for extreme brutality as they fought the Taliban both for ideological reasons and for control of local smuggling and narcotics routes, according to Western intelligence services.

Since the day before the Taliban swept into Kabul, the United States and its allies have mounted one of the biggest air evacuations in history, bringing out about 95,700 people, including 13,400 on Wednesday, the White House said on Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at least 4,500 American citizens and their families had been evacuated from Afghanistan since mid-August.

The Taliban have encouraged Afghans to stay, while saying those with permission to leave will still be allowed to do so once foreign troops leave and commercial flights resume.

The Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule was marked by public executions and the curtailment of basic freedoms. Women were barred from school or work. The group was overthrown two decades ago by U.S.-led forces for hosting the al Qaeda militants who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

State television showed rescue teams looking for survivors in the rubble of the two-story residential building located near a historic marketplace in the old district of the city of Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.

“The gas explosion led to the complete destruction of a two-story residential building… and four nearby residential buildings and six shops,” Ebrahim Qanbari, head of the fire department in Ahvaz, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Four men and one woman were killed, and nine people were injured, Qanbari said.

Some of the explosions in the past few months appeared to be linked to Iran’s deteriorating infrastructure, while others may have been security-related such as blasts at sensitive military and nuclear sites.

According to the local reports, the explosion on Tuesday was in the port area of Beirut containing warehouses. The authorities fear many casualties.

A UN tribunal is due to issue its verdict on Friday in the trial of four suspects in the murder by car bomb of Hariri. All the four suspects are members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, which has consistently denied any role in Hariri’s death.

There are unconfirmed reports of a second blast, which is reported to be at the Hariri’s residence.

Lebanon’s health minister has spoken of many injuries and extensive damage, while the cause of the explosions is not yet clear.

The fire destroyed three of the train’s carriages near the town of Rahim Yar Khan in the south of Punjab province. It was on its way to Rawalpindi, near the capital, from the southern city of Karachi, with many people traveling to a religious gathering.

It was the worst disaster on Pakistan’s accident-plagued railway system in nearly 15 years.

“Two stoves blew up when people were cooking breakfast, the presence of kerosene with the passengers in the moving train further spread the fire,” Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Geo television.

Many of the dead were killed when they leapt from the moving train to escape the flames, he said.

People sneaking stoves onto trains to prepare meals on long journeys is a common problem, the minister said. Shortly before the fire broke out, the conductor had ordered some passengers to stop cooking but they had ignored him, Ahmed said.

But several survivors questioned whether the fire was sparked by a cooking accident, telling media they believed the cause was a short-circuit in the train’s electrical system.

Television pictures showed fire and black smoke pouring from the train’s windows after it came to a stop on a stretch of line flanked by fields.

“People were jumping off, some of them were on fire,” a witness told Geo.

Some of the victims were burned beyond recognition, said the deputy commissioner of the district, Jameel Ahmad.

“We’ll have to carry out DNA tests,” Ahmad told Reuters.

Nearly 40 people were injured, many with serious burns, he said.

Many of the passengers were heading to a conference organized by the Tablighi Jamaat Sunni Muslim missionary movement, officials said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was deeply saddened.

“I have ordered an immediate inquiry to be completed on an urgent basis,” Khan said in a post on Twitter.

Pakistan’s colonial-era railway network has fallen into disrepair in recent decades due to chronic under-investment and poor maintenance, and accidents are common.

About 130 people were killed in 2005 when a train rammed into another at a station in Sindh province, and a third train hit the wreckage.