U.S. Responds To ISIS-K Suicide Bombing With Two Consecutive Attacks

Following a Thursday suicide blast which ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for, the United States has retaliated with two recent attacks in Afghanistan.

A suicide bombing on Thursday, which occurred outside the airport where Afghans gathered finding flights to leave the country, killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 other people. President Biden vowed to hunt down the perpetrators. He said, “We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”

The U.S. initially responded with its first retaliatory drone strike on Friday that killed two Islamic State militants in Nangarhar province. The U.S. Central Command described one person killed as an ISIS-K planner who was suspected of plotting potential future attacks. However, the U.S. Major General, William Taylor, said there were no known civilian casualties in the first attack.

The United States performed a second “defensive” airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan, targeting a suspected suicide bomber who posed an “imminent” threat to security at the airport, U.S. Central Command Sunday. The strike occurred in Kabul’s Khaje Bucharest neighbourhood.

The airstrike claimed to cost the lives of nine members of a family(including six children). A neighbour told a reporter, “All the neighbours tried to help and brought water to put out the fire, and I saw that there were five or six people dead.” “They were dead. They were in pieces. They were two wounded.” The youngest of those killed was a 2-year old girl, a brother to a deceased said.

The U.S. Central Command spokesman, Capt. Bill Urban said, “We know that there were substantial and powerful subsequent explosions resulting from the destruction of the vehicle, indicating a large amount of explosive material inside that may have caused additional casualties. It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further.”

An official from the Pentagon informed news reporters that the target was a vehicle believed to contain multiple suicide bombers based on initial reports.

The Taliban condemned the attack by the U.S. on Friday. A Taliban spokesperson told Reuters, “The Americans should have informed us before conducting the airstrike.” A Taliban Spokesman, Bills Kareemi, told CNN that it was “not right to conduct operations on others soil.”

While many initially thought President Biden was not as ferocious in tackling the perpetrators, a White House Press Secretary, Jen Psak, said the President (referring to the people responsible for the bombing) “does not want them to live on the Earth anymore.” President Biden still remains focused on completing the U.S. evacuation mission set for August 31.