WASHINGTON — The Taliban have killed the chief of the Islamic State cell answerable for the suicide bombing on the worldwide airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021 that killed 13 U.S. troops and as many as 170 civilians, 4 senior American officers stated on Tuesday.
The administration on Monday started calling family of the American troops who died within the assault to inform them that the chief of the terrorist cell had been killed by Taliban safety forces in latest weeks.
The American officers stated that U.S. intelligence analysts turned conscious in early April that the mastermind of the assault, whom they declined to determine, had died in a Taliban operation in Afghanistan. It was unclear whether or not the Taliban had been particularly concentrating on the rebel or he was killed in one of many growing variety of assaults between Taliban and Islamic State fighters, the officers stated.
The officers stated that primarily based on categorized intelligence studies — almost definitely from informants, digital intercepts or data from allied spy providers — analysts concluded with “excessive confidence” that the chief plotter of the airport assault had been killed. However the officers provided no proof to assist that conclusion or different particulars about his purported dying.
Officers had been additionally sparing with the main points they had been keen to share with the households of the killed service members.
“They couldn’t give me his identify; they couldn’t inform me the main points of the operation,” stated Darin Hoover, the daddy of Employees Sgt. Taylor Hoover of the Marine Corps, who was killed in the course of the blast.
Mr. Hoover stated that whereas he had not anticipated the army to share every part it knew, the decision left him feeling “pissed off, once more.”
“I would like the administration to take some accountability and accountability for this,” Mr. Hoover stated. “Say, ‘We screwed up. It’s not going to occur once more.’ It might’t occur once more. He gave his life for this. That is what he needed to do, and that is what occurred — and now we’re all being handled like rubbish.”
The 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan and its aftermath proceed to be a topic of heated debate on Capitol Hill, the place Republicans have voiced related calls for of the Biden administration.
G.O.P. lawmakers have accused the administration of being instantly answerable for the failures of the exit and condemned administration officers as inept on the subject of the way forward for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. Democrats have largely defended these officers, arguing they did the most effective they may in a tough state of affairs and faulting President Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, for making a cope with the Taliban that dedicated america to exit.
Consultant Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the Home International Affairs Committee chairman, who’s working one of many congressional investigations into the Afghanistan evacuation, hailed the reported killing of the terrorist chief answerable for the Abbey Gate assault. He stated in a press release that “if these studies are true, any time a terrorist is taken off the board is an effective day.”
“However this doesn’t diminish the Biden administration’s culpability for the failures that led to the assault at Abbey Gate, and can on no account deter the committee’s investigation,” Mr. McCaul added.
There’s very restricted, if any, data sharing concerning the Islamic State between the Taliban and america, and the U.S. officers stated america had no involvement within the assault that killed the cell chief.
The Islamic State affiliate, often known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-Okay, and the Taliban have been preventing pitched battles since america withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The assault raised ISIS-Okay’s worldwide profile, positioning it as a significant menace to the Taliban’s capacity to manipulate the nation and, in response to American officers, as probably the most imminent terrorist danger to america popping out of Afghanistan.
President Biden and his prime commanders have stated america would perform “over-the-horizon” strikes from a base within the United Arab Emirates towards ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten america.
Over the previous two years, the Taliban have waged a heavy-handed marketing campaign towards ISIS-Okay in Afghanistan. To date, their safety providers have successfully prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting massive numbers of former Taliban fighters bored in peacetime — among the many worst case eventualities laid out after Afghanistan’s Western-backed authorities collapsed.
Nonetheless, within the absence of American airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed lots of its leaders, ISIS-Okay has unfold from its authentic stronghold in jap Afghanistan to almost all the nation’s 34 provinces, in response to the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan. The group has additionally carried out main suicide assaults on authorities buildings and international embassies in Kabul.
The assaults have undercut the peaceable picture the Taliban have sought to color of Afghanistan underneath their rule, the primary stretch of relative calm the nation has seen in 40 years and an indicator promise of the Taliban’s new authorities. Whilst some officers with the Taliban administration promote the successes of raids on purported ISIS-Okay hide-outs, others have outright denied the existence of ISIS-Okay within the nation.
In February 2022, a Pentagon report concluded {that a} single Islamic State suicide bomber carried out the assault on the Abbey Gate of the airport. The findings by a crew of Military-led investigators contradicted preliminary studies by senior U.S. commanders that militants fired into the gang of individuals on the airport searching for to flee the nation and triggered among the casualties.
The report additionally absolved Marines of firing deadly photographs into the gang at Abbey Gate as some officers had suspected due to the big quantity of ammunition the Marines had fired after the assault, which befell on Aug. 26.
The Islamic State recognized the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari. American officers say he was a former engineering scholar who was one among a number of thousand militants free of no less than two high-security prisons after the Taliban seized management of Kabul 11 days earlier than the assault. The Taliban emptied the amenities indiscriminately, releasing not solely their very own imprisoned members but in addition fighters from ISIS-Okay.
Maybe the most important error by america after the Abbey Gate bombing would come simply three days later. On Aug. 29, American officers, fearful that one other suicide bomber would assault the airport, launched a drone strike, hitting a white Toyota loaded with what had been doubtless water canisters, not explosives. The officers who known as within the strike had not observed video footage that confirmed the presence of no less than one little one within the space two minutes earlier than the strike.
Ultimately, 10 civilians, together with seven kids, had been killed.
Karoun Demirjian reported from Washington, and Eric Schmitt from Portland, Ore. Christina Goldbaum contributed reporting from London.
