Late Friday night, the Pentagon announced a drone strike against ISIS-K in retaliation for the deadly bombing at the Kabul airport. The mission was believed to have killed the target: a planner who military officials believe planned future attacks.
The American airstrike was retaliation for the attack at the Kabul airport Thursday, in which 13 U.S. service members were killed along with at least 169 Afghans. America began learning more about those fallen service members – 11 Marines, one Navy corpsman, and one Army soldier — on Friday and into Saturday.
And with only three days left until Biden’s Aug. 31 withdrawal, evacuations continued for Americans, Afghan allies and others seeking to escape the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban. They made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’:
The U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan airport bombing Names and other details of the 13 U.S. service members killed in Thursday’s Kabul airport attack began to become public on Friday through family and friends:
- Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, Jackson, Wyoming
- Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, of Wentzville, Missouri
- Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20, of Laredo, Texas
- Navy Hospital Corpsman Max Soviak, of Berlin Heights, Ohio
- Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Riverside County, California
- Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20, of Norco, California
- Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, 31, of Daggett County, Utah
- Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, of Red Oak, Iowa
- U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tennessee
President Joe Biden commended the “bravery and sacrifice” of the U.S. military Friday, calling the 13 deaths “tragic” but saying they died for a “worthy mission.”
Learn who they were: They made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’: The U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan airport bombing –Jeanine Santucci.
killed and wounded American service members and Afghan civilians in Kabul that the U.S. would “hunt you down and make you pay.”
A day later, he followed through on that threat. The Pentagon announced late Friday that a military drone strike targeted a planner for ISIS-K, the first American attack on the terrorist group following a bomb attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport.
The airport attack – one of America’s deadliest days in the nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan – drew harsh censure from Republicans, stoked fears about the final days of America’s evacuation mission, and threatened to define Biden’s still-young presidency as one of chaos instead of the competence he promised on the campaign trail.
Read the rest here: Biden said the U.S. would ‘hunt’ down Kabul airport attackers. A day later, a drone strike killed an ISIS-K planner. –Michael Collins
