The Pentagon announced Saturday that the U.S. strike targeting ISIS-K terrorists took out two high-profile “planners and facilitators” in response to the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport that killed 13 American soldiers and dozens of Afghans.
Major General Hank Taylor told reporters that the over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation killed “two high profile” ISIS-K targets and wounded another. The Pentagon had initially announced that only one target had been killed on Friday evening, but since then more information had come in.
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The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar Province and was a single mission. There were no civilian targets. Fox News confirmed Friday that the drone hit a vehicle carrying an ISIS-K target who was believed to be planning future attacks.
The Pentagon would not go into detail about the targets’ connections to the Thursday attack at Kabul Airport, but described them as “planners and facilitators.” It would not release the names of those taken out by the U.S. strike.
The suicide bombing, and subsequent firefight at the Kabul airport, killed 13 American service members and dozens of civilians who had gathered at the airport in the hope of boarding flights out of the country amid the Taliban takeover ahead of the U.S. withdrawal on Aug. 31.
The U.S. has been scrambling to get Americans, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and other Afghans deemed “at-risk” out of the country. The Pentagon said on Saturday that so far 117,000 people, mostly Afghans, have been evacuated. Of those, 5,400 are Americans.
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Taylor said that some gates at the airport have been closed in recent days, but there are still gates open to continue to process and evacuate those eligible for evacuation.
President Biden has taken significant political pressure for the chaotic evacuation, criticism of which was renewed after the terrorist bombing on Thursday — with some Republicans calling for his resignation or impeachment.
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But Biden has stuck to the Aug. 31 withdrawal date and after the attack on Thursday had promised to track down those responsible, while pledging that the operation “will not be deterred by terrorists.”
“For those that carried out this attack as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget,” Biden said. “We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command.”
Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
