Pictures: Daesh suicide bombers kill scores at Kabul airport

A person wounded in a bomb blast outside the Kabul airport arrives at a hospital. Twin suicide bombs ripped through crowds outside Kabul airport on Thursday, killing scores of people including 13 US troops and deepening panic in the final days of an already frenzied evacuation effort from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The bombings, claimed by the Daesh group, left scenes of carnage outside the airport where thousands of Afghans desperate to flee their country had massed despite a flurry of foreign government warnings - made just hours before - that a major terror attack was imminent.

The suicide bombers targeted people trying to reach access gates at the airport, creating scenes of terror and devastation.

Footage shared on social media showed men and women in a tangled mess in the shin-deep water of a drainage canal. Stunned survivors pulled themselves to their feet, while others desperately shouted for help in searching the carnage for loved ones.

The Italian NGO Emergency said the hospital it operates in Kabul had been overwhelmed by a "massive influx" of more than 60 casualties, 16 of whom were pronounced dead on arrival.

The injured "could not speak, many were terrified, their eyes totally lost in emptiness, their gaze blank", the hospital's medical coordinator Alberto Zanin said in a post on the group's Twitter account.

The deaths of the 13 American troops were the worst single-day death toll for the US military in Afghanistan since 2011.

The US government and its allies had raised the alarm earlier in the day with a series of advisories warning their citizens to avoid the airport.

A person with blood stained clothing outside a hospital in Kabul.

A person wounded in a bomb blast outside the Kabul airport arrives at a hospital.

The scene outside a hospital in Kabul, following a bomb blast.

A person wounded in a bomb blast outside the Kabul airport arrives at a hospital.

A person wounded in a bomb blast outside the Kabul airport arrives at a hospital.

People carrying an injured person to a hospital after an attack at Kabul airport.

People outside a hospital after an attack at Kabul airport.