Afghanistan has revised the death toll from Tuesday's Taliban attack in Kabul to 64 -- more than double its original estimate -- with nearly 350 people wounded. Whether there will be a political fallout from the devastation, and what the attackers would have been hoping for?

It was one of the biggest terrorist attacks by number of casualties in Afghanistan since 2001. And it struck in the heart of the capital city Kabul -- only a few hundred metres from the Presidential Palace.

The shock wave from the Taliban's attack is still rippling through Afghanistan's corridors of power as the government struggles to explain an assault of this size hitting the very office charged with protecting the country's political and security elite.

It has thrown the spotlight on the country's fractured security forces - with many pointing to the National Unity Government as the fundamental cause for the weakness.

"The security sector is not fully functioning because we are still having acting ministers, particularly the Minister of Defence and acting minister of the intelligence services. This has created an environment of mistrust among government ministers themselves, and of course, the Taliban are taking advantage of this situation," said Haroon Mir, a political analyst.

The government has in turn tried to shift blame -- again, to Pakistan.

"Our primary investigation shows this terrible attack was getting orders from outside our borders," said Abdul Rahman Rahimi, Kabul police chief.

This belief triggered the first major political casualty with Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah cancelling his trip to Pakistan scheduled for next month. This is a welcome move for the Taliban who oppose cooperation between the two countries.

The majority of the casualties were civilians, most of whom were brought to hospitals like this throughout the city. Of the wounded we spoke to today, one of the men pleaded with the Taliban not to wage attacks like this anymore. He said, "Please we are poor people and when you do these attacks, we are the target."

For Fazel, a father of eight children, his family must wait for his eyes to heal before he can work again. For Khalid, aged 26 with a one-year-old daughter, he was only four days into his new government job as a driver when the disaster struck.

The sheer number of civilians caught in the blast has compounded the pressure on the government to be seen to act quickly. Some have called for President Ashraf Ghani to step down -- a coup in itself for the Taliban.

"It will certainly be a big advantage for the Taliban. This is the purpose of these kinds of attacks, it's to create panic, it's to create problems for the National Unity Government and they have been successful with that," Mir said.