Suicide bombers bring bloodshed to Kabul
Attacks outside airport kill dozens, including 13 American troops
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two explosions killed dozens of people, including at least 13 U.S. troops, when they ripped through the crowds outside Afghanistan’s main airport Thursday.
The attack came just hours after Western governments had warned of an imminent Islamic State group attack and told their people to stay away from 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 the U.S. officially ends its 20-year presence Tuesday.
The attack, by at least two suicide bombers, struck at the only avenue of escape for the thousands of foreign nationals and tens of thousands of their Afghan allies who are trying to flee the country after the Taliban takeover and before the final withdrawal of U.S. troops, set for Tuesday.
Afghan health officials gave varying estimates of the toll at
the international airport in Kabul — from at least 30 dead to more than 60, and from 120 wounded to 140 — while a Taliban spokesperson cited at least 13 civilians killed and 60 wounded.
For U.S. forces, the attacks were a gruesome coda to almost 20 years of warfare in Afghanistan — one of their heaviest losses, just days before they’re set to leave the country. Besides the 13 service members killed, 15 were wounded, the Pentagon said.
The U.S. service members included at least 11 Marines and a Navy medic
“We’re outraged as well as heartbroken,” President Joe Biden said in an address from the White House.
“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this,” he said to the attackers. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command.”
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said blame for the bombing should fall solely on the Taliban. She added that Americans must remember the heroism of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
“I think it is important for us to acknowledge the commitment … of our soldiers who are determined not to leave one American behind.”
In Kabul, bystanders hoping to find survivors picked their way among torn and bloodied bodies that littered the ground outside one of the airport’s main gates, or waded into a drainage canal where other bodies bobbed in the water.
“I saw bodies of women, children and men scattered all around after the blast,” one Afghan witness said.
He said he and other civilians, along with Taliban fighters, fled after the first explosion. He said there were rumors the Islamic State group had sent four suicide bombers, and he feared more detonations.
The bombings hint at a new round of violence that may lie in store for a country that has suffered more than 40 years of warfare, as the Taliban militants’ new regime is being challenged by still more extreme groups such as the Islamic State Khorasan, the terrorist branch known as ISIS-K.
Intelligence has revealed other “very, very real” terrorist threats to the airport, said Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, including plans for rocket attacks and a vehicle bombing.
But Biden and other U.S. officials insisted that the carnage and continued danger wouldn’t halt the U.S.-led airlift that, after a belated and rocky start, has ferried more than 100,000 people out of Afghanistan in the past two weeks. Many of those were Afghans who had worked with NATO forces and their families and who feared Taliban reprisals.
Biden has said repeatedly that he wanted to end the long U.S. involvement in Afghanistan precisely to avoid such U.S. casualties. Some NATO allies and humanitarian groups have called for Biden to delay the final military withdrawal, but the president said the attacks on Thursday reinforce “why I’ve been so determined to limit the duration of this mission.”
“These American service members who gave their lives,” Biden said, were “heroes who have been engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others.”
Most of the bombing victims were Afghan civilians, including families with small children, who had thronged the airport hoping to get precious space on one of the departing military transports. One blast detonated at the Abbey Gate on the southeast perimeter of the airport and the other near the Baron Hotel a few hundred feet away.
At Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, a doctor said there were 27 dead and 57 wounded transported from the airport — and no space left in the morgue.
McKenzie said it appeared that a suicide bomber, most 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. But he said he had no reason to believe that the Taliban, who are eager for the Americans to leave as quickly as possible, knowingly let the bomber through.
The chief Taliban spokesperson, however, said the attack took place in an area where U.S. forces controlled security.
The danger didn’t stop desperate Afghans from trying to reach the airport.
Nadia Sadat, a 27-year-old Afghan, carried her 2-year-old daughter with her outside the airport. She and her husband, who had worked with coalition forces, missed a call from a number they believed was the State Department and were trying to get into the airport without any luck. Her husband had pressed ahead in the crowd to try to get them inside.
“We have to find a way to evacuate because our lives are in danger,” Sadat said. “My husband received several threatening messages from unknown sources. We have no chance except escaping.”
Aman Karimi, 50, escorted his daughter and her family to the airport, fearful the Taliban would target her because of her husband’s work with NATO.
“The Taliban have already begun seeking those who have worked with NATO,” he said. “They are looking for them house by house at night.”
Early Friday morning, alarmed Kabul residents reported another series of explosions near the airport, setting off fears of another bombing attack.
Taliban officials and Afghan journalists soon reported otherwise: It was Americans, they said, destroying their own equipment as they prepared to leave Afghanistan.