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Washington (CNN) Two "high profile" ISIS targets were killed and another was injured in a US drone strike in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Saturday, a retaliatory step following the terrorist attack that killed 13 US service members and at least 170 others outside Kabul's international airport.
"I can confirm, as more information has come in, that two high-profile ISIS targets were killed, and one was wounded. And we know of zero civilian casualties," Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, deputy director of the Joint Staff For Regional Operations, said in a news conference Saturday. "Without specifying any future plans, I will say that we will continue to have the ability to defend ourselves and to leverage over-the-horizon capability to conduct counterterrorism operations as needed."
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said all the targets were hit in a single strike, and that they were "ISIS-K planners and facilitators."
A US defense official told CNN earlier Saturday that one of the individuals was believed to be "associated with potential future attacks at the airport." The US located him and "had sufficient eyes on and sufficient knowledge" to strike, the official said, adding that he "was a known entity" but that the US is not calling him a "senior" ISIS-K operative.
The individual was in a compound in the Jalalabad area, another defense official told CNN, and new intelligence following the terrorist attack in Kabul was firmed up to give justification for the strike. The source said surveillance continued on the compound until the target's wife and children left before the US conducted the targeted drone strike.
"I'm not going to talk about specific capabilities ISIS may have lost in this strike. They lost a planner, and they lost a facilitator. And they have one wounded. The fact two of these individuals are no longer walking on the face of the Earth, that's a good thing," Kirby said Saturday.
"It is a good thing for the people of Afghanistan, it's a good thing for our troops and our forces at that airfield."
The announcement of the strike came a day after President Joe Biden vowed to retaliate for the terrorist attack in Kabul even as he said the frantic mission to airlift Americans from Afghanistan would continue. Biden approved the strike on the ISIS-K planner, according to an official familiar with the matter.
"We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay," the President said in remarks from the White House on Thursday.
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