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85 People Killed in Two Suicide Attacks in Kabul, Including 13 US Soldiers, 28 Taliban Fighters, 44 Civilians,  Evacuations Continue

August 27, 2021

 

US soldiers in Kabul airport, August 25, 2021	Afghanis attempting to get to the Kabul airport, August 26, 2021

A wounded person is wheeled into hospital on a stretcher after explosions at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 26, 2021	Afghanis lining up to depart the Kabul airport in a US military plane, August 24, 2021

 

U.S. on alert for more attacks after 85 killed in Kabul airport carnage

Summary

Bombs kill 72 Afghans, 13 U.S. soldiers Evacuations speed up despite ISIS threat -Western official Around 105,000 airlifted abroad in 12 days -White House WHO hopes to set up aid air bridge into Mazar-i-Sharif

Aug 27 (Reuters) -

U.S. forces helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee new Taliban rule were on alert for more attacks on Friday after an Islamic State attack killed 85 people including 13 U.S. service members just outside Kabul airport.

General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said U.S. commanders were watching for more attacks by Islamic State, including possibly rockets or car bombs targeting the airport.

Graphic: Where bombers struck the Kabul International airport

"We're doing everything we can to be prepared," McKenzie said, adding that some intelligence was being shared with the Taliban and that he believed "some attacks have been thwarted by them".

Thursday's two blasts and gunfire took place near the airport gates where thousands of people have gathered to try to get inside the airport and onto evacuation flights since the Taliban took control of the country on Aug 15.

U.S. and allied forces are racing to complete evacuations of their citizens and vulnerable Afghans and to withdraw from Afghanistan by an Aug. 31 deadline set by President Joe Biden.

Islamic State (ISIS), an enemy of the Islamist Taliban as well as the West, said one of its suicide bombers had targeted "translators and collaborators with the American army".

The attack underlined the realpolitik facing Western powers in Afghanistan: engaging with the Taliban who they have long sought to fend off may be their best chance to prevent the country sliding into a breeding ground for Islamist militancy.

A health official and a Taliban official said the toll of Afghans killed had risen to 72, including 28 Taliban members, although a Taliban spokesman later denied that any of their fighters guarding the airport perimeter had been killed.

It was not clear if suicide bombers detonated both blasts or if one was a planted bomb. It was also unclear if ISIS gunmen were involved in the attack or if the firing that followed the blasts was Taliban guards firing into the air to control crowds.

Video taken after the attack showed corpses in a waste water canal by the airport fence, some being fished out and laid in heaps while wailing civilians searched for loved ones.

'HUNT YOU DOWN'

Biden said on Thursday evening he had ordered the Pentagon to plan how to strike ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility.

10/21

U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load passengers aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 24, 2021. Picture taken August 24, 2021. U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/Handout via REUTERS

"We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay," Biden said during televised comments from the White House.

Biden, criticized at home and abroad for the chaos around the final U.S. troop withdrawal even before Thursday's deadly attacks, says the United States long ago achieved its original rationale for invading the country in 2001.

The U.S.-led invasion toppled the then-ruling Taliban, punishing them for habouring al Qaeda militants who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks.

TALIBAN GUARDS

Taliban guards blocked access to the airport on Friday, witnesses said. "We had a flight but the situation is very tough and the roads are blocked," said one man on an airport approach road.

Another 12,500 people were evacuated from Afghanistan on Thursday, raising the total airlifted abroad by the forces of Western countries since Aug. 14 to about 105,000, the White House said on Friday.

The United States will press on with evacuations despite the threat of further attacks, McKenzie said, noting that there were still about 1,000 U.S. citizens in Afghanistan.

The pace of flights accelerated on Friday and American passport holders had been allowed to enter the airport compound, according to a Western security official inside the airport.

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the threat of attacks would increase as Western troops got closer to completing the huge airlift and leaving.

"The narrative is always going to be, as we leave, certain groups such as ISIS will want to stake a claim that they have driven out the U.S. or the UK," Wallace told Sky News. He also vowed action against ISIS wherever it manifests itself.

ISIS-K was initially confined to areas on the border with Pakistan but has established a second front in the north of the country. The Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point says ISIS-K includes Pakistanis from other militant groups and Uzbek extremists in addition to Afghans.

Western officials acknowledge that thousands of Afghans seeking to leave will be left behind when the last U.S. troops leave next week.

"There is a sort of suspended feeling, atmosphere...People in Kabul are not surprised (about the attacks), just scared and exhausted - they would like to finally get rid of war but they see the light at the end of the tunnel still far away,” Rosella Miccio, head of Italian aid agency Emergency, told Reuters.

There are growing worries that Afghans will face a humanitarian emergency with the coronavirus spreading and shortages of food and medical supplies looming.

Medical supplies will run out within days in Afghanistan, the World Health Organization said on Friday, adding that it hopes to establish an air bridge into the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif with the help of Pakistan.

Reporting by Reuters bureaux Writing by Stephen Coates Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Mark Heinrich and Frances Kerry

U.S. on alert for more attacks after 85 killed in Kabul airport carnage | Reuters 

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'No Deadline' for Afghanistan Evacuations, Says Blinken

By Steve Herman

VOA, August 25, 2021 10:56 PM

WHITE HOUSE -

The U.S. government is pledging to continue efforts to extricate Americans, U.S. permanent residents, allies and other vulnerable Afghans, even if it means going past the end-of-the-month deadline for American forces to leave Afghanistan.

There is "no deadline in getting out Americans and Afghans who want to leave past August 31," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

"They will not be forgotten," Blinken emphasized as he responded to reporters' questions. "And as I said, we will use every diplomatic, economic assistance tool at our disposal to pressure the Taliban to let people leave the country."

FILE - Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23. (US Marine Corps photo)

Throughout Wednesday at the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House, officials continued to rebut criticism about chaos at the gates of Kabul's airport.

The White House said Wednesday that since Aug. 14, the U.S. has evacuated or helped evacuate about 82,300 people on U.S. military and coalition flights in one of the largest airlifts in history. Since the end of July, the U.S. has relocated about 88,000 people, nearly half of them women and children.

"We're on track to have the largest U.S. airlift in history. And I think that speaks for itself," Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters.

"It's hard to overstate the complexity and the danger of this effort," Blinken said at the State Department. "We're operating in a hostile environment in a city and country now controlled by the Taliban, with the very real possibility of an ISIS-K attack.  We're taking every precaution, but this is very high-risk."

On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul posted a warning on its website.

"Because of security threats outside the gates of Kabul airport, we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so," the embassy statement said. "U.S. citizens who are at the Abbey Gate, East Gate, or North Gate now should leave immediately."

As many as 1,500 American civilians remain in Afghanistan. There were about 6,000 Americans in Afghanistan on Aug. 14, according to Blinken, when Taliban insurgents took military control of the country and evacuations began. But since then, he said, at least 4,500 Americans have been airlifted out of the country, including 500 in the past day.

Kabul Evacuations Ramp Up as G-7 Leaders Fail to Shift US Deadline US allies say they cannot operate evacuation flights without US firepower, raising fears that many citizens and eligible Afghans may be left behind

About 10,000 people hoping to escape the country are currently crammed into the airport in Kabul, according to U.S. officials who said a total of 90 U.S. military and international flights had left Kabul in the past day.

It "will not be an American responsibility" to control security at the airport after Aug. 31, according to Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby.

Officials at the Pentagon and White House on Wednesday urged U.S. lawmakers to not travel to Kabul to witness the evacuation after Representatives Seth Moulton, a Democrat, and Peter Meijer, a Republican — both of whom served military tours of duty in the Mideast — made an unannounced trip to the Afghan capital this week to assess the situation.

"We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand," the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

US Congressmen Visit Kabul Airport Amid Evacuation Effort Officials said such trips could be a distraction for military and diplomats

The lawmakers released their statement after flying out of Kabul on a chartered plane. They said that in their view, after seeing the situation firsthand and speaking to commanders on the ground, "we won't get everyone out" before President Joe Biden's Tuesday deadline. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement Tuesday saying travel to the region by lawmakers would divert resources from the evacuation operation. 

"Given the urgency of this situation, the desire of some [members of Congress] to travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding areas is understandable and reflective of the high priority that we place on the lives of those on the ground," Pelosi said.  "However, I write to reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that [lawmakers] not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger. Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the U.S. military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan."

Other lawmakers are seeking hearings about what went wrong with the U.S. departure from Afghanistan.

"The House Foreign Affairs Committee intends to conduct oversight to evaluate the policies that led to the Taliban's reestablishing control of the country, including those that drove the Trump administration's February 2020 agreement, and how this will impact the United States' broader Afghanistan and counterterrorism strategy," the committee's chairman, Democrat Gregory Meeks, said in a statement Wednesday.

For Some Afghan Women, Evacuation a Matter of Life or Death  Esin, like other female students, especially those who also worked with Western embassies, missions and NGOs in Kabul, as she did, is desperate to get out of Afghanistan

Biden "has signed the death warrant for thousands of Afghans who helped us," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News, calling for the president's impeachment for "dereliction of duty" as the commander in chief.

Blinken was asked by a reporter Wednesday whether those in the Biden administration, in power for seven months, were willing to accept responsibility for the recent U.S. shortcomings regarding Afghanistan.

"I take responsibility. I know the president has said he takes responsibility. And I know all of my colleagues across government feel the same way," Blinken said.

He added there will be plenty of time to look back and see what might have been done differently and more effectively, but right now, "my entire focus is on the mission at hand."

'No Deadline' for Afghanistan Evacuations, Says Blinken | Voice of America - English (voanews.com) 

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