US MQ-9 Reaper drone (file photo)
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 29, 2021
The United States has carried out a drone strike in Kabul on a vehicle carrying Islamic State militants, military officials said on August 29.
The officials said the drone strike hit the vehicle, which was heading for the airport with suicide bombers inside. The U.S. said it believes it was a successful strike and that the intended target was hit.
“U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon air strike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat” to the airport, said Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.
“Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material,” he said, adding that there were “no indications at this time” of civilian casualties.
There have been reports of an explosion at a house near the airport, but it wasn’t clear if the two explosions were connected.
An Afghan police chief said the attack killed a child, according to the Associated Press. Rashid, the Kabul police chief who goes by one name, said the rocket struck Kabul’s Khuwja Bughra neighborhood in the afternoon.
Reports of the explosion circulated on social media showed black smoke rising from a building that appeared to be a home and people on the roof attempting to douse flames using buckets of water.
A Health Ministry source confirmed to the BBC that an explosion had taken place, saying it was a rocket that hit a house.
The explosion occurred as U.S. forces were in the final phase of pulling out of Kabul. Just over 1,000 civilians remained at the airport on August 29 to be flown out before the troops finally leave, a Western security official told Reuters.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said he will stick by his deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by August 31, ending two decades of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan that began shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
The situation at the airport has been tense since one of the airport’s outer gates was the scene of a suicide bombing three days ago claimed by the militant group Islamic State-Khorosan that killed scores of people, including 13 members of the U.S. military.
The U.S. military said it carried out a drone strike in eastern Nangarhar Province two days after the suicide bombing. The retaliatory strike killed a planner and a facilitator of the attack, the Pentagon said.
Biden said on August 28 that the situation on the ground in Afghanistan “continues to be extremely dangerous” and the threat of terrorist attacks on the airport in Kabul “remains high.”
Biden said that he met with his national-security team and commanders in the field and was informed that an attack “is highly likely in the next 24-36 hours.”
Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, AP, CNN, AFP, and the BBC