Subscribe to The Spectator this summer and get the next 10 weeks of the magazine as well as unlimited access to our website and app for just £10. Not only that, we'll send you a bottle of PIMS absolutely free. Only while stocks last, so go to www.combecktator.combeau.combeauld us offender. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy

you and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and Lucy Fisher, Deputy Political Editor of the Daily Telegraph.

So in the last few hours, there have been two explosions outside Kabul airport, the worst of what people were expecting.

Lucy, can you update us on what we know at

the time of recording? Yes, so right now, the UK's initial assessment is that there have been

two explosions. The first is thought to have been a suicide bomber at the Barron Hotel, where many

Afghans trying to be evacuated by Britain are being processed. That explosion was

followed by a small arms fire. Then a second explosion took place very nearby at the Abbey Gate,

which is the UK gate, mainly manned by British personnel. But in fact, that bomb, which is thought

to have been a vehicle bomb, has entered up injuring US service personnel.

And it's highly likely defence sources believe that ISIS KP is behind the attack.

And given the pictures and the footage we've seen of the area around the airport in the last week, I mean, the death toll could be quite high.

Yes, Taliban officials have been quoted by Al Jazeera as thinking that so far the death toll has reached 13, possibly with

many, many more injured. And as you say, Cindy, the footage and some of the pictures coming out

from the scene are incredibly distressing people covered in blood being

carted away in wheelbarrows to seek urgent medical attention. So yeah, tragically, we could see

the death toll and potentially rise further. Isabel, the prime minister is due to chair a cobra

meeting later this afternoon. But is there anything that the British side can do

except continue doing what it was doing before, which is speeding up evacuations?

Yeah, I mean, the message from ministers overnight, both actually the UK and the US, has been

for people not to come to the airport unless they were already going through the processing centre and to head for the borders

instead, which is going to raise all kinds of other issues when people do reach the borders,

...