Kabul airport blasts kill scores
U.S. troops among dead; Biden vows ISIS will ‘pay’
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two explosions killed dozens of people, including at least 13 U.S. troops, ripping through the crowds outside Afghanistan’s main airport Thursday, just hours after Western governments had warned of an imminent Islamic State group attack and told their citizens to stay away from the airport.
The attack, by at least two suicide bombers and numerous gunmen, killed at least 60 Afghans, wounded more than 140, and injured at least 18 U.S. troops, Afghan and U.S. officials said. Officials warned that the toll could grow.
From the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden said the latest bloodshed would not drive the U.S. out of Afghanistan earlier than scheduled and that he had instructed the U.S. military to develop plans to strike ISIS.
“We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killings on its Amaq news channel. The Taliban were not believed to have been involved in the attacks and condemned the blasts. The Afghan faction of ISIS, known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, is more radical than the Taliban, and the
groups have clashed in the past.
The U.S. general overseeing the evacuation said the attacks would not stop the U.S. from evacuating Americans and others, and flights out were continuing. Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said there was a large amount of security at the airport, and alternate routes were being used to get evacuees in. About 5,000 people were awaiting flights on the airfield, McKenzie said.
The blasts came hours after Western officials warned of a major attack, urging people to leave the airport. But that advice went largely unheeded by Afghans desperate to escape the country in the last few days of an American-led evacuation before Tuesday, when the U.S. officially ends its 20-year presence in Afghanistan.
Intelligence has revealed other “very, very real” terrorist threats to the airport, McKenzie said in a news briefing, including plans for rocket attacks and a vehicle bombing.
“The plan is designed to operate under stress,” McKenzie added.
Some NATO allies and humanitarian groups have called for Biden to delay the final military withdrawal, but the president said the attacks reinforce “why I’ve been so determined to limit the duration of this mission.”
“We will not be dissuaded from the task at hand,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “To do anything less — especially now — would dishonor the purpose and sacrifice these men and women have rendered our country and the people of Afghanistan.”
BOMBING VICTIMS
Most of the bombing victims were Afghan civilians, including families with small children, who had thronged the airport hoping to get space on one of the departing military transport planes. One blast detonated at what’s known as the Abbey Gate on the southeast perimeter of the airport, and the other went off near the Baron Hotel a few hundred feet away.
One of the bombers struck people standing knee-deep in a wastewater canal under the sweltering sun, throwing bodies into the fetid water. Those who moments earlier had hoped to get on flights out could be seen carrying the wounded to ambulances in a daze, their own clothes darkened with blood.
“I saw bodies of women, children and men scattered all around after the blast,” said one Afghan witness who requested anonymity because he feared for his safety. He said he and other civilians, along with Taliban fighters, fled after the first explosion, because there were rumors that the Islamic State group “had sent four suicide bombers,” and he feared more detonations.
Emergency, an Italian charity that operates hospitals in Afghanistan, said it had received at least 60 patients wounded in the airport attack, in addition to 10 who were dead when they arrived.
“Surgeons will be working into the night,” said Marco Puntin, the charity’s manager in Afghanistan. The wounded overflowed the triage zone into the physiotherapy area, and more beds were being added, he said.
The Afghan official who confirmed the overall Afghan toll spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
McKenzie said it appeared that a suicide bomber, likely wearing a concealed explosives vest, had made it through the checkpoints outside the airport, many of them run by Taliban soldiers who are supposed to detect such attackers.
Clearly, some failure at the airport allowed a suicide bomber to get so close to the gate, McKenzie said, but added that there was no indication that the Taliban deliberately allowed Thursday’s attacks to happen.
He said the U.S. has asked Taliban commanders to tight- en security around the airport’s perimeter.
Adam Khan was waiting nearby when he saw the first explosion outside the Abbey gate. He said several people appeared to have been killed or wounded, including some who were maimed.
The second blast was at or near Baron Hotel, where many people, including Afghans, Britons and Americans, were told to gather in recent days before heading to the airport for evacuation. Additional explosions could be heard later, but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said some blasts were carried out by U.S. forces to destroy their equipment.
A former Royal Marine who runs an animal shelter in Afghanistan says he and his staff were caught up in the aftermath of the blast near the airport.
“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,” Paul Farthing told Britain’s Press Association news agency.
Farthing is trying to get the staff of his Nowzad charity out of Afghanistan, along with the group’s rescued animals.
He is among thousands trying to flee. Over the past week, the airport has been the scene of some of the most searing images of the chaotic end of America’s longest war and the Taliban’s takeover, as flight after flight took off carrying those who fear a return to the militants’ brutal rule.
BIDEN REACTION
In Washington, Biden spent much of Thursday morning in the secure White House Situation Room where he was briefed on the explosions and conferred with his national security team and commanders on the ground in Kabul.
During the early morning Thursday warnings emerged from Western capitals about a threat from ISIS, which has seen its ranks boosted by the Taliban’s freeing of prisoners during its advance through Afghanistan.
Shortly before the attack, the acting U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, Ross Wilson, said the security threat at the Kabul airport overnight was “clearly regarded as credible, as imminent, as compelling.” But in an interview with ABC News, he would not give details.
Late Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy warned citizens at three airport gates to leave immediately because of an unspecified security threat. Australia, Britain and New Zealand also advised their citizens Thursday not to go to the airport.
Amid the warnings and the pending American withdrawal, Canada ended its evacuations, and European nations halted or prepared to stop their own operations.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied that any attack was imminent at the airport, where the group’s fighters have deployed and occasionally used heavy-handed tactics to control the crowds. After the attack, he appeared to shirk blame, noting that the airport is controlled by U.S. troops.
Before the blast, the Taliban sprayed a water cannon at people gathered at one airport gate to drive the crowd away, as someone launched tear gas canisters elsewhere.
EVACUATION PROGRESSION
Thursday’s attacks came 12 days into the rushed evacuations and five days before its scheduled completion.
The State Department had identified about 6,000 Americans who were in Afghanistan on Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban began entering Kabul and the U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country. On Wednesday, the department said that figure was down to 1,500, and it was trying frantically to reach them all, telling them to get to the airport or sending helicopters to extract them.
Already, some countries have ended their evacuations and begun to withdraw their soldiers and diplomats, signaling the beginning of the end of one of history’s largest airlifts. The Taliban have insisted that foreign troops must be out by America’s self-imposed deadline of Aug. 31 — and the evacuations must end then, too.
Some Republicans and others are arguing to extend the evacuation beyond Tuesday’s deadline.
The administration has been widely blamed for a chaotic and deadly evacuation that began in earnest only after the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California called for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to bring the chamber back into session to consider legislation that would prohibit the U.S. withdrawal until all Americans are out. Pelosi’s office dismissed such suggestions as “empty stunts.”
Despite intense pressure to extend the deadline, Biden has repeatedly cited the threat of terrorist attacks against civilians and U.S. service members as a reason to stick to his plan.
Wilson, the U.S. ambassador, said, “there are safe ways to get to” the airport for those Americans who still want to leave. He added that “there undoubtedly will be” some at-risk Afghans who will not get out before Biden’s deadline.
The number of evacuees fell for a second day as the terror attack and further threats kept people from the airport and as other countries began shutting down their efforts. From 3 a.m. to 3 p.m., Washington time, about 7,500 people were evacuated, a White House official said. Fourteen U.S. military flights carried about 5,100, and 39 coalition flights carried 2,400.
The total compared with 19,000 in one 24-hour period toward the start of the week.
Thursday’s deaths marked the first U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan since February 2020, the month the Trump administration struck an agreement with the Taliban that called for the militant group to halt attacks on Americans in exchange for a U.S. agreement to remove all American troops and contractors by May 2021. Biden announced in April that he would have all forces out by September.
Biden said U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan had told him it is important to complete the evacuation mission. “And we will,” he said. “We will not be deterred by terrorists.”
“We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place of our choosing,” Biden said. “These ISIS terrorists will not win. We will rescue the Americans; we will get our Afghan allies out, and our mission will go on. America will not be intimidated.”
Information for this article was contributed by Rachel Pannett, Ellen Francis and Erin Cunningham of The Washington Post; by Sayed Ziarmal Hashemi, Rahim Faiez, Lolita C. Baldor, Joseph Krauss, Jill Lawless, Jon Gambrell, Sylvie Corbet, Jan M. Olsen, Tameem Akhgar, Andrew Wilks, James LaPorta, Mike Corder, Philip Crowther, Colleen Barry, Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee, Robert Burns, Darlene Superville and Ellen Knickmeyer of The Associated Press; and by Matthieu Aikins, Jim Huylebroek, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times.