Hyderabad: The United States military has carried out a drone strike targeting the Islamic State in Afghanistan on Saturday in retaliation for a suicide bombing that killed as many as 169 Afghans and 13 American service members at the Kabul airport.
US Central Command said that US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation against an ISIS-K planner in the Nangahar province of Afghanistan. In a statement, Spokesman Navy Capt. William Urban said the initial indications are that the target was killed and that there were no civilian casualties.
Read: 'We will hunt you down': Biden warns Kabul airport attackers
In another development, the US embassy in Kabul has asked its citizens in Afghanistan to leave the airport gates 'immediately'. "Because of security threats at the Kabul airport, we continue to advise US citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates. U.S. citizens who are at the Abbey gate, East gate, North gate, or the New Ministry of Interior gate now should leave immediately," the US embassy in Kabul said in a statement on its website.
Speaking with emotion from the White House, President Joe Biden Thursday had vowed to avenge the deaths of 13 US service members killed in the attack. Biden said the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate was to blame for the attacks that killed the Americans and many more Afghan civilians and that he had instructed military commanders to develop plans to strike IS “assets, leadership, and facilities.”
According to a statement issued by the White House, at least 4,200 people were evacuated from Kabul in a 12-hour period on Friday (local time). Since August 14, the US has helped evacuate approximately 109,200 people from Afghanistan.
