Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport Thursday, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the waning days of an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. The attacks killed at least 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops, Afghan and U.S. officials said.
The bombs were set off near a crowd of families at the airport gates who were desperately hoping to make one of the last evacuation flights out. Gunfire was reported in the aftermath of the explosions. The night before the attack, a senior U.S. official warned of a “specific” and “credible” threat at the airport by an affiliate of the Islamic State — the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K — and Western governments began urging people to leave the area. 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 on Aug. 31. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the killings on its Amaq news channel. The IS affiliate in Afghanistan is far more radical than the Taliban, who recently took control of the country in a lightning blitz. The Taliban were not believed to have been involved in the attacks and condemned the blasts. President Biden on Thursday denounced the terrorist attack at the Kabul airport, saying that the frantic evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies from Afghanistan will continue even as he pledged to hunt down those responsible for the attacks.
Mr. Biden spoke after the U.S. military sustained one of its highest single-day American tolls during its 20-year Afghanistan campaign and were the first American service members killed in Afghanistan since February 2020. For the U.S. military, it was a day with more deaths than any other since 2011. Meanwhile, US officials strongly believe that the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), was responsible for the attack. ISIS-K is opposed by the United States and the Taliban.
