The U.S. military carried out a drone strike on an Islamic State target in Afghanistan on Friday, the first retaliatory action following an attack at Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members and at least 170 other people.
The terrorist group, known as Islamic State-Khorasan or ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the Thursday airport bombing, and President Biden told the extremists that U.S. forces would “hunt you down and make you pay.”
“The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan,” said Navy Capt. Bill Urban, a U.S. military spokesman. “Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties.”
The strike came as the U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned Americans of ongoing security threats at the capital’s airport and urged them to “leave immediately.”
Two British nationals and the child of another British national were killed in the suicide bombing that tore through crowds outside the Kabul airport, Britain’s top diplomat said Friday.
“I was deeply saddened to learn that two British nationals and the child of another British national were killed by yesterday’s terror attack, with two more injured,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement.
“These were innocent people and it is a tragedy that as they sought to bring their loved ones to safety in the UK they were murdered by cowardly terrorists,” he said. “Yesterday’s despicable attack underlines the dangers facing those in Afghanistan and reinforces why we are doing all we can to get people out.”
The blast targeting the airport while evacuations were underway killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans seeking to flee a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. A local affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
“We will not turn our backs on those who look to us in their hour of need, and we will never be cowed by terrorists,” Raab said in the statement.
Earlier Friday, however, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that the country’s evacuation mission in Afghanistan was about to end.
“We will process the people that we’ve brought with us, the 1,000 people approximately in the airfield now,” he told British media. “But overall the main processing is now closed and we have a matter of hours.”
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As the Taliban encircled Kabul on Aug. 15, Fada Mohammad told his family about what he’d seen on Facebook: Canada and the United States were airlifting anyone who wanted to leave out of the Kabul airport.
But if Fada wanted to go himself, recalled his father, Payanda Mohammad, he didn’t mention it.
The young dentist never reached either country. The next day, he didn’t make it beyond a rooftop four miles from Kabul airport, where his body was found after he plunged from a U.S. military plane as it took off — one of the most tragic and indelible images in the final chapter of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.
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BERLIN — Thousands of Afghans who put their lives at risk to work with the United States' NATO allies have been left behind as the military evacuations wrap up, and they hunker down in fear over Taliban reprisals.
Britain became the latest nation to announce an end to its airlifts on Friday, as British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC radio that evacuations would end in hours. The British military has airlifted nearly 14,000 people out over the past two weeks, but “the sad fact is that not every single one will get out,” he said, with up to 1,100 eligible Afghans who “didn’t make it.”
Other countries fell further short of their targets. Germany, whose last soldiers flew out of Afghanistan on Thursday evening, said it had rescued around 4,000 Afghans — far shy of the 10,000 people it had identified as at risk.
The troop departures marked a new phase of uncertainty and fear for those who worked side-by-side with everyone from foreign troops to aid workers to project coordinators. While the United States is continuing airlifts, it is focusing on its own Afghan partners and stranded citizens.
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