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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is vowing to avenge the deaths of 13 American troops and dozens of Afghans in attacks at the Kabul airport that thrust the White House deeper into crisis over a chaotic and deadly end to a 20-year war. Retribution, however, will be harder with fewer U.S. intelligence assets in Afghanistan.
In an emotional address after the attacks, Biden declared to the extremists responsible: “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”
The president, speaking from the White House Thursday, said the U.S.-led evacuation of Americans and others from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan would proceed, and indeed more than 12,000 people were airlifted from Kabul in the last 24 hours, as of Friday morning. U.S. military officials have said they are braced for more attempted attacks by the group Biden said was responsible for Thursday’s attack — the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.
The Pentagon on Friday said it had incorrectly reported that in addition to a suicide bomber attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate, there was an explosion at the nearby Baron Hotel. Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff told reporters that it is now believed there was no attack at the hotel. He said that the U.S. military report was incorrect; he attributed the mistake to confusion in the aftermath of the violence.
The IS affiliate in Afghanistan has carried out many attacks on civilian targets in the country in recent years. It is more radical than the Taliban, who seized power less than two weeks ago and are an enemy of IS. The most heralded American attack on IS came in April 2017 when the U.S. dropped the largest conventional bomb in its arsenal on an IS cave and tunnel complex. The group more recently is believed to have concentrated in urban areas, which could complicate U.S. efforts to target them without harming civilians.
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