The US military on Sunday carried out a successful punitive airstrike against a suspected IED-rigged vehicle heading for the Kabul airport.
The hit, following up on Saturday’s US drone attack that had killed two IS-K planners of the August 26 airport bombing, came as the August 31 deadline for American withdrawal from Afghanistan ticked into view. Afghanistan crisis live updates The Pentagon said Sunday’s unmanned strike was conducted in “self-defence” and eliminated an imminent IS-K threat to the airport.
Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. There were unconfirmed casualties from the airstrike that heralds the start of a new “over-the-horizon” warfare, which suggests the US won’t be intimated by the fact that 300 or so Americans are still stranded in Afghanistan and face the prospect retaliatory action by militants. Around the same time, a rocket struck a neighbourhood just northwest of the airport. Details of this attack are sketchy.
Rocket hits house in Kabul, kills child An Afghan police chief says a rocket has struck a neighborhood northwest of Kabul’s international airport amid the US evacuation there, killing a child. Rashid, the Kabul police chief who like many Afghans goes by one name, says the rocket struck Sunday afternoon. No group immediately claimed the US officials said only about 300 or so Americans remained in Afghanistan. Many of the Americans 300 are believed to be Afghan-Americans or dual citizens who do not want to leave. Retired US veterans and private contractors are said to be engaged in exfiltrating those who do want to get out. The airstrikes took place even as President Biden was heading to the Dover AirForce Base for the dignified transfer ceremony that will see the slain US military personnel being honored.
The personnel include female marines: Johanny Rosariopichardo, 25, from the marines’ Female Engagement Team who was in Kabul interacting with Afghan women barred by custom from talking to male strangers, and Nicole Gee, 23, who had posted an August 20 Instagram picture of herself cradling an Afghan baby with the caption “I love my job.” Biden, who has attended dignified transfer ceremonies as vice-president, was earlier trolled by right wing extremists who claimed that he had not gone to Dover even though the bodies had arrived several hours before and that families of slain members did not want him there.
The President and his aides continued to face attack from the right questioning their competency with calls for the resignation of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Taliban-led government will stop any such attack in Afghanistan after August 31, said Suhail Shaheen, spokesperson Sullivan pushed back on Sunday morning talks shows, specifically rejecting allegations that the Biden administration had naively handed over lists of people it wanted safe passage for to the airport for evacuation, which some critics claimed simply enabled Taliban to hunt them down. “We’ve given no list of all the American SIV holders to the Taliban or any other kind of big list… Some idea that we’re handing databases or lists to the Taliban is unfounded and inaccurate,” Sullivan told CNN.
