WASHINGTON — The Taliban have killed the chief of the Islamic State cell chargeable 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, the White Home stated on Tuesday.
4 senior American officers stated that U.S. intelligence analysts turned conscious in early April that the mastermind of the assault, whom they declined to establish, had died in a Taliban operation in Afghanistan. It was unclear whether or not the Taliban have been particularly focusing on the rebel or he was killed in one of many rising variety of assaults between Taliban and Islamic State fighters, the officers stated.
John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the Nationwide Safety Council, referred to as the Taliban operation “one other in a sequence of high-profile management losses” that the Islamic State cell, generally known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-Okay, had suffered this 12 months.
The officers stated that primarily based on labeled intelligence experiences — almost definitely from informants, digital intercepts or info from allied spy providers — analysts concluded with “excessive confidence” that the chief plotter of the airport assault had been killed. However the officers supplied no proof to help that conclusion or different particulars about his purported demise.
The administration on Monday started calling family members of the American troops who died within the assault to inform them that the ISIS-Okay chief had been killed by Taliban safety forces in current weeks. Officers have been additionally sparing with the small print they have been keen to share with the households.
“They couldn’t give me his identify; they couldn’t inform me the small print of the operation,” stated Darin Hoover, the daddy of Workers 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 all the pieces it knew, the decision left him feeling “annoyed, once more.”
“I would like the administration to take some accountability and duty for this,” Mr. Hoover stated. “Say, ‘We screwed up. It’s not going to occur once more.’ It will probably’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 comparable calls for of the Biden administration.
G.O.P. lawmakers have accused the administration of being immediately chargeable for the failures of the exit and condemned administration officers as inept in the case of the way forward for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. Democrats have largely defended these officers, arguing they did the very best they may in a troublesome state of affairs and faulting President Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, for making a take care of the Taliban that dedicated the USA to exit.
Consultant Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the Home Overseas Affairs Committee chairman, who’s operating one of many congressional investigations into the Afghanistan evacuation, hailed the reported killing of the terrorist chief chargeable for the Abbey Gate assault. He stated in an announcement that “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 under no circumstances deter the committee’s investigation,” Mr. McCaul added.
There’s very restricted, if any, info sharing concerning the Islamic State between the Taliban and the USA, and the U.S. officers stated the USA had no involvement within the assault that killed the cell chief.
ISIS-Okay and the Taliban have been combating pitched battles since the USA withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The assault raised ISIS-Okay’s worldwide profile, positioning it as a serious risk to the Taliban’s means to control the nation and, in line with American officers, as essentially the most imminent terrorist threat to the USA popping out of Afghanistan.
President Biden and his high commanders have stated the USA would perform “over-the-horizon” strikes from a base within the United Arab Emirates in opposition to ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten the USA.
Over the previous two years, the Taliban have waged a heavy-handed marketing campaign in opposition to ISIS-Okay in Afghanistan. Thus far, their safety providers have successfully prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting giant numbers of former Taliban fighters bored in peacetime — among the many worst case situations 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 japanese Afghanistan to just about the entire nation’s 34 provinces, in line with the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan. The group has additionally carried out main suicide assaults on authorities buildings and overseas 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 a trademark promise of the Taliban’s new authorities. At the same time as 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 group of Military-led investigators contradicted preliminary experiences by senior U.S. commanders that militants fired into the gang of individuals on the airport looking for to flee the nation and brought about a few of the casualties.
The report additionally absolved Marines of firing deadly pictures 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 happened on Aug. 26.
The Islamic State recognized the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari. American officers say he was a former engineering pupil who was certainly one of a number of thousand militants free of at the least two high-security prisons after the Taliban seized management of Kabul 11 days earlier than the assault. The Taliban emptied the services indiscriminately, releasing not solely their very own imprisoned members but in addition fighters from ISIS-Okay.
Maybe the largest error by the USA 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 have been possible water canisters, not explosives. The officers who referred to as within the strike had not seen video footage that confirmed the presence of at the least one little one within the space two minutes earlier than the strike.
Ultimately, 10 civilians, together with seven kids, have been killed.
Karoun Demirjian reported from Washington, and Eric Schmitt from Portland, Ore. Christina Goldbaum contributed reporting from London.
