Fri 27 August 2021:
On Friday, the casualty toll from the Kabul airport attack claimed by Islamic State Khorasan Province increased as the United States led evacuation efforts to get people and officials out of war-torn Afghanistan.
The death toll reached 90, with over 150 injured, according to media reports.
Among the attack’s victims were 13 US soldiers, including two outside the airport serving the city, plus over a dozen injured, announced the Pentagon.
“We lost more people than the Americans,” said an unnamed official of the Taliban, the group which took control of the city excepting the airport on Aug. 15, adding that 28 Taliban members lost their lives.
He reiterated that the US does not need to extend the Aug. 31 deadline to complete its evacuation and withdraw.
An anonymous Western security official said that the evacuation of civilians from the airport accelerated after the attacks, and flights were carried out regularly.
At least two separate explosions took place on Thursday near Hamid Karzai International Airport, which has been thronged by crowds seeking entrance to the airport to arrange for evacuation.
Many countries worldwide as well as the Taliban condemned the attacks.
On Thursday, Turkey condemned the terror attacks and said there had been no casualties among Turkish troops at the airport.
US President Joe Biden confirmed Thursday that the attacks were carried out by the ISIS-K terrorist group, the Afghan affiliate of Daesh/ISIS, and promised to respond with “force and precision.”
Biden has promised to avenge the deaths of 13 US service members killed in the attack, declaring the extremists responsible. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said.
Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesperson for the US Central Command (CENTCOM), said the US soldiers wounded in the attack “are in the process of being aeromedically evacuated from Afghanistan on specially equipped C-17s with embarked surgical units.”
Daesh/ISIS-K later claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to a statement from the group.
US forces are in control of the airport as evacuations continue – the only area of the country still under US control.
Thousands of people are waiting at the airport for evacuation, and large crowds have gathered outside the airport grounds, seeking a way inside to get a flight out.
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