Kabul hospitals overwhelmed by wounded from airport attack

Doctors and nurses in Kabul worked through the night to treat some of the 150 people injured in Thursday's double bomb attack near the airport.

Hospitals, already struggling with fewer staff since the Taliban took power a week ago, have been overwhelmed, reports the BBC.

The Kabul Surgical Centre, run by the international medical charity Emergency, said it received 60 wounded in less than two hours, including at least 16 people pronounced dead on arrival.

The charity's president, Rossella Miccio, not in Afghanistan, said staff who had already finished their shifts went straight back to the hospital to help.

"The three operating theatres of the hospital have been working all night long," she told the BBC's Today programme.

"The last patient was operated on at 4 o'clock."

She said some of the patients remain in intensive care "so the situation is still quite critical".

The hospital's medical co-ordinator said in a post on the group's Twitter account that patients were "terrified, their eyes totally lost in emptiness, their gaze blank. Rarely have we seen such a situation."