Biden vows revenge after terror attack

‘We will not forgive. We will not forget’

At a concrete barrier outside Kabul airport, a man sobbed helplessly as he filmed a pile of bodies, limbs entwined.

The dead lay among the rubbish, cast-off sandals, abandoned bags and water bottles.

A fetid canal that had been crammed with civilians attempting to enter the airport was now shown in video footage filled with bodies lying in the filthy water, some lifeless, others apparently critically wounded as bystanders struggled to pull the injured up the steep sides of the waterway. Shocked survivors picked through the bloodsoaked detritus looking for anyone still alive.

At least 12 U.S. troops were confirmed killed in the attack on Thursday, and up to 60 Afghan civilians. The Pentagon said another 15 U.S. service members had been injured.

Hours earlier, hundreds of Afghans had stood kneedeep in the open sewer under a sweltering sun, holding their documents aloft, desperately trying to attract the attention of allied forces who were processing people on to evacuation flights.

Such was their desperation to escape Taliban rule that thousands had ignored warnings of an imminent terrorist threat to remain at the airport, as evacuation efforts were winding down ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for foreign forces to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Early reports suggested two suicide bombers and an unknown number of gunmen were able to infiltrate deep into the packed crowds near the airport to cause maximum casualties.

The Islamic State terrorist group said one of its suicide bombers targeted “translators and collaborators with the American army.”

President Joe Biden, his voice breaking with emotion, vowed on Thursday that the U.S. would hunt down the attackers. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said. “We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing.”

Biden said U.S. evacuations would continue. He gave no indication of a change in next Tuesday’s U.S. pullout target.

The U.S. deaths were the first in action in Afghanistan in 18 months, a fact likely to be cited by critics who accuse Biden of recklessly abandoning a stable and hard-won status quo by ordering an abrupt pullout.

Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. Mckenzie Jr, commander of U.S. Central Command, said more attacks were likely. “We expect them to continue.”

He said the working assumption was that the first bomber detonated his device while being searched by U.S. soldiers.

The first blast was at Abbey Gate on the southeastern airport perimeter. The day before, U.S. troops had been briefed on the risk of a suicide vest detonating near their position.

A second explosion went off by the canal near the Baron Hotel, where many people, including Afghans, Britons and Americans, were told to gather before heading to the airport for evacuation. Earlier this week, a Canadian flag was reported to be flying in the hotel garden

“We climbed out of the water and saw that injured people were hurled everywhere, their brains scattered everywhere,” a man told a local television station, describing the blast as incredibly powerful. “Bodies, flesh and people were thrown into the canal,” another man at the scene told AFP news agency.

“When people heard the explosion there was total panic. The Taliban then started firing in the air to disperse the crowd at the gate,” a third witness said. “I saw a man rushing with an injured baby in his hands.”

In the confusion, the man said he had dropped the documents he hoped would help him board a flight with his wife and three children.

“I will never ever want to go again. Death to America, its evacuation and visas,” he shouted.

Blurry photos depicted sheer terror as people rushed away from the blast.

Men with blood pouring from holes torn in their shalwar kameez outfits were carried away in wheelbarrows.

“There were many people injured at the airport, full of blood and without hands,” said a man who was nearby with his wife, two children and brother.

“Some people were without legs, even someone whose face was full of blood and the skin blown off,” the man told The Telegraph. A former interpreter for the British military said he had barricaded himself in a shop nearby the airport with his wife and six children.

With the airport no longer an option for evacuation, he said he and his family now hoped to travel overland to Pakistan. “Kabul is too risky for me. There are more Taliban standing at the front of the shop. I will decide tomorrow (to leave),” he said.

A former British Royal Marine who was near one of the blasts said his vehicle was targeted by a gunman amid the chaos.

Paul “Pen” Farthing, who founded an animal shelter in Kabul, was trying to get 200 dogs and cats out of the country alongside his staff.

Farthing, who was outside the airport in a car when the incident occurred, told the PA news agency: “We’re fine but everything is chaos here at the moment.

“All of a sudden we heard gunshots and our vehicle was targeted, had our driver not turned around he would have been shot in the head by a man with an AK-47. We’ve been in the airport, and back out of the airport; the whole thing’s a mess.”

Earlier an aircraft had taken evasive action to avoid machine gunfire during take off, which Italian intelligence sources attributed to a truck mounted weapon firing in the air to disperse the crowds near one of the airport gates. A journalist aboard the Italian military C-130 aircraft carrying nearly 100 Afghan refugees said the pilot had “pulled off an emergency manoeuvre” to avoid the gunfire and the plane was not hit.

For those still on the ground, fear of future Taliban reprisals had outweighed the proximate danger posed by terrorists, suspected to have been dispatched by a local franchise of the Islamic State terrorist group.

An Afghan special forces soldier said he had waited inside the Baron Hotel for three days before a British officer told him on Wednesday that he did not have approval to travel. While others in his unit were able to fly out, the man said he was left behind, frantic because of threats he had received from the Taliban since they overran Afghanistan.

“If they don’t help me, the Taliban will kill me and my family and my friends in my unit,” the 33-year-old said in broken English tinged with an American accent.

As night fell and muezzins across Kabul began their calls to prayer, the wail of sirens carried over a traumatized city.