The harrowing events of August 26, 2021, are seared into Shafiullah Samsor's memory.
Twenty-two years old at the time, Samsor was among the thousands of desperate Afghans who had amassed outside Kabul airport hoping to be airlifted from the country by the U.S. military.
Just days before, the Taliban had seized control of the Afghan capital, triggering panic among the city's 5 million inhabitants.
Amid the chaotic scenes outside the airport, which was still controlled by departing U.S. forces, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest among the crowd, unleashing a scene of horror.
"Suddenly, there was a loud explosion, which threw me to the ground," Samsor recalled. "There was shouting, and people began running everywhere. I remember the blood and dust around me before I fell unconscious."
The university student was rushed to hospital, where he remained in a coma for four days. When he woke up, the doctors informed him that his spine was fractured in four places. A piece of shrapnel had also pierced his throat.
Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Kabul Airport on August 30, 2021.
Around 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel were killed in the bombing, one of the deadliest attacks of the entire 19-year U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Hundreds more like Samsor were wounded.
The bombing claimed by the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) extremist group became a symbol of the chaotic and deadly U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan that was completed on August 31.
Three years on, survivors are still reeling from the psychological and physical effects of the attack.
Samsor never returned to university to complete his degree in English literature. He cannot work and can barely walk even with the help of crutches.
He and his five sisters and mother depend on remittances sent by his older brother, who works in neighboring Iran.
Samsor's family spent all their savings and sold off a plot of land and their car to fund his treatment.
"I hope that Allah will punish those responsible for devastating my life and the lives of so many others," he said.
Meisam Ahmadi lost his two brothers in the bombing.
Alireza Ahmadi, a journalist, and Mujtaba Ahmadi, a photojournalist, had joined the crowd outside Kabul Airport's Abbey Gate after a friend told them he had been allowed to enter the airport by U.S. forces. The friend, Meisam said, had promised to help the brothers get in.
"Unfortunately, there was an explosion there, and both of them were standing together, and they lost their lives," Meisam said.
'Badly Handled'
Survivors and the families of the victims of the bombing are still seeking answers about what happened.
Two investigations by the Pentagon concluded that all the victims were killed by a lone suicide bomber.
But a CNN investigation based on new video evidence and released in April this year suggested dozens of the victims may have been shot dead by U.S. soldiers.
Three days after the Abbey Gate bombing, the U.S. military carried out a drone strike targeting what it initially said was an IS-K compound in Kabul.
This image distributed courtesy of the U.S. Air Force shows the inside of Reach 871, a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft flown from Kabul to Qatar on August 15, 2021.
Instead, the U.S. drone strike killed an Afghan aid worker and nine people from his extended family in what the Pentagon called a "tragic mistake."
Michael Semple, an Afghanistan expert at Queen's University Belfast, said the horrific Kabul Airport attack embodied Washington's mishandling of the international military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"It was time for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan, but the scenes of disorder which we saw, and which were sort of epitomized by the carnage which happened at Abbey Gate, show that it was badly handled," Semple said.
In 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement for the phased withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan.
But a lightening Taliban military offensive in the summer of 2021 led to the collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government before all international forces had left the country.
U.S.-led forces kept control of Kabul Airport for two weeks after the Taliban takeover, evacuating tens of thousands of foreign nationals as well as at-risk Afghans.