WASHINGTON — The Taliban have killed the chief of the Islamic State cell liable 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 mentioned on Tuesday.
The administration on Monday started calling kinfolk 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 mentioned 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 have been particularly focusing on the rebel or he was killed in one of many growing variety of assaults between Taliban and Islamic State fighters, the officers mentioned.
The officers mentioned that based mostly on categorized intelligence stories — probably from informants, digital intercepts or info from allied spy companies — analysts concluded with “excessive confidence” that the chief plotter of the airport assault had been killed. However the officers supplied no proof to assist that conclusion or different particulars about his purported dying.
Officers have been additionally sparing with the main points they have been keen to share with the households of the killed service members.
“They couldn’t give me his title; they couldn’t inform me the main points of the operation,” mentioned Darin Hoover, the daddy of Workers Sgt. Taylor Hoover of the Marine Corps, who was killed through the blast.
Mr. Hoover mentioned that whereas he had not anticipated the army to share every little thing it knew, the decision left him feeling “annoyed, once more.”
“I need the administration to take some accountability and accountability for this,” Mr. Hoover mentioned. “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 straight liable for the failures of the exit and condemned administration officers as inept in terms of the way forward for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. Democrats have largely defended these officers, arguing they did one of the best they might in a troublesome state of affairs and faulting President Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, for making a cope with the Taliban that dedicated the US 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 liable for the Abbey Gate assault. He mentioned in a press release that “if these stories are true, any time a terrorist is taken off the board is an efficient day.”
“However this doesn’t diminish the Biden administration’s culpability for the failures that led to the assault at Abbey Gate, and can by no means deter the committee’s investigation,” Mr. McCaul added.
There may be very restricted, if any, info sharing concerning the Islamic State between the Taliban and the US, and the U.S. officers mentioned the US had no involvement within the assault that killed the cell chief.
The Islamic State affiliate, often called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-Ok, and the Taliban have been preventing pitched battles since the US withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The assault raised ISIS-Ok’s worldwide profile, positioning it as a significant risk to the Taliban’s potential to manipulate the nation and, in accordance with American officers, as essentially the most imminent terrorist threat to the US popping out of Afghanistan.
President Biden and his prime commanders have mentioned the US would perform “over-the-horizon” strikes from a base within the United Arab Emirates towards ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten the US.
Over the previous two years, the Taliban have waged a heavy-handed marketing campaign towards ISIS-Ok in Afghanistan. To this point, their safety companies have successfully prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting massive 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 a lot of its leaders, ISIS-Ok has unfold from its authentic stronghold in jap Afghanistan to just about the entire nation’s 34 provinces, in accordance with 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 beneath 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-Ok hide-outs, others have outright denied the existence of ISIS-Ok 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 stories by senior U.S. commanders that militants fired into the group of individuals on the airport searching for to flee the nation and precipitated among the casualties.
The report additionally absolved Marines of firing deadly photographs into the group at Abbey Gate as some officers had suspected due to the massive quantity of ammunition the Marines had fired after the assault, which passed off 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 one in all a number of thousand militants free of not 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 additionally fighters from ISIS-Ok.
Maybe the largest error by the US 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 probably water canisters, not explosives. The officers who referred to as within the strike had not observed video footage that confirmed the presence of not less than one little one within the space two minutes earlier than the strike.
In the long run, 10 civilians, together with seven youngsters, have been killed.
Karoun Demirjian reported from Washington, and Eric Schmitt from Portland, Ore. Christina Goldbaum contributed reporting from London.