TEHRAN - Two suicide blasts and the sound of gunfire erupted Tuesday at the main military hospital in Kabul, in an attack that killed at least 20 people and injured dozens more, a doctor and a Taliban official said.

The doctor at Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan military hospital, Habib Rahman, said at least 20 people had been killed and more than 43 wounded, but added he expected the toll to rise because the first explosion at the entrance also hit many people.

The two back-to-back powerful attacks were reported at the entrance of the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital, the country’s biggest military hospital, in central Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan area, interior ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosty said.

The explosions, followed by indiscriminate gunfire, led to chaos inside and outside the busy hospital, reports quoting eyewitnesses said.

At least 43 had been wounded in the attack until the last reports came in. The casualty toll is likely to mount as many have been admitted to hospitals in critical condition, reports said.

Khosty said the Taliban’s special forces had rushed to the scene to secure the area.

Afghanistan’s private TV Tolo News, citing an Italian NGO that runs a separate hospital in Kabul, said the hospital had received some ten people with injuries from the blast site.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but according to Kabul-based Bakhtar News Agency, a number of Daesh terrorists had entered the hospital and clashed with security forces.

The hospital had come under terrorist attack in 2017 when gunmen disguising as medical personnel killed at least 30 people.

There have been a series of terrorist attacks across Afghanistan in recent weeks, mostly claimed by the Daesh terrorist group, which is engaged in fierce power rivalry with the Taliban.

Today’s attack is the worst since the twin bombings outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in late August, which killed at least 175 people.

Senior Taliban officials have unequivocally blamed the US for the resurgence of Daesh, which ironically coincided with the botched exit of the US-led coalition forces from Afghanistan in mid-August.

The US-led NATO alliance invaded the South Asian country in 2001 under the pretext of ‘war on terror,’ to decimate the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. None of the goals were achieved despite massive investment.

Incidentally, Tuesday’s attack came on the anniversary of the deadly attack on Kabul University, which killed scores of students.