Evacuation efforts continue as deadline looms
United States military forces are in a race against time to complete their evacuation operation in Afghanistan before the Tuesday deadline.
On Thursday, 13 US service members were killed when a suicide bomb detonated outside the airport gates. On Sunday, US forces targeted a suspected ISIS-K suicide bomber who posed an “imminent” threat to the airport, US Central Command said, according to a CNN report.
The drone strike on Sunday, which targeted a vehicle, is the second, in the space of three days, carried out by US forces.
“We are confident we successfully hit the target,” US CENTCOM Spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said. “Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.”
It’s not clear whether the vehicle was intended to be a car bomb or if it was being used by the suicide bomber as a form of transport.
A Pentagon official told CNN that according to initial reports, the target was a vehicle believed to be containing multiple suicide bombers.
The threat could have also been a car bomb or someone with a suicide vest, he said, citing initial reports.
The situation in Afghanistan continues to be dangerous and volatile not only for US forces attempting to carry out the evacuation operation and Afghan allies, but also for those Afghans attempting to flee their country and find safety elsewhere.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he, along with the United Kingdom, intend to submit a “resolution to an emergency session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) that would focus on the creation of a ‘safe zone’ in Kabul for Afghans leaving the country,” according to the CNN report.
This would allow humanitarian efforts to continue, uninterrupted by the Taliban.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration is committed to a “safe passage of Americans and Afghans who helped the US government after the withdrawal deadline. There are approximately 250 Americans who are attempting to leave Afghanistan, according to a US State Department spokesperson.
While US forces attempt to evacuate those remaining in Afghanistan, the 11 Marines, one Army soldier and one Navy corpsman, who died in the Thursday bombing, made their way back to US soil in a “dignified transfer,” Sunday at Dover Air Force Base.
They were the first troops killed in hostile action in Afghanistan since February 2020, when two soldiers were killed in Nangarhar province, during combat.