US Military Review: ISIS Kabul Airport bombing in 2021 not preventable
A recent U.S. military review has revealed that the perpetrator behind the bombing outside Kabul airport in August 2021, which resulted in the deaths of 170 Afghans and 13 American service members, was an Islamic State operative. He had previously been detained in a coalition facility in Afghanistan but was released by the Taliban, marking […]
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A recent U.S. military review has revealed that the perpetrator behind the bombing outside Kabul airport in August 2021, which resulted in the deaths of 170 Afghans and 13 American service members, was an Islamic State operative.
He had previously been detained in a coalition facility in Afghanistan but was released by the Taliban, marking the first identification of his involvement.
Despite claims from certain service members present at the airport on that fateful day, who asserted they had identified the suicide bomber and were instructed not to intervene, a review determined they had targeted the wrong individual. Consequently, the strike was deemed unpreventable.
“There was no opportunity to engage the bomber prior to the attack,” according to a high-ranking U.S. military official familiar with the supplemental review.
The US military confirmed that Abdul Rahman al-Logari, a Daesh bomber at Kabul Airport, had been released from prison after the Taliban took control.
“With access to analysis from across the intelligence community, we were able to identify the Abbey Gate person-borne IED bomber as Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an [ISIS-K] member since 2016,” said one Army official on the 12-person, joint supplemental review team.
CENTCOM released its findings on the Kabul airport bombing of August 2021, on Monday, amid the tumultuous withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, following a suicide attack that killed 13 US soldiers and 170 Afghans.
Tyler Andrews, a former US Marine, testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March this year that he and his colleagues had spotted a suspicious man who might have been a Daesh attacker, but their requests for action were denied at the time.
The US military also identified for the first time the suicide bomber at Kabul airport as Abdul Rahman al-Logari, a member of ISIS-K, who was imprisoned in Afghanistan and released after the Taliban took over.
Members of the Kabul Airport incident investigation team provided images of the suspected man to some reporters, identifying him as a potential threat, but after comparing the image with al-Logari, they concluded they were not the same person.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense, shortly after the incident, announced the primary perpetrator of the Kabul airport attack as Kabeer Idri and claimed that Idri was killed in a US airstrike on August 27.
According to recent US military reviews, the suspected Daesh militant was seen around 7 a.m. local time at Kabul Airport and was not seen after 10 a.m., nearly seven hours before the bombing occurred.
Despite receiving similar reports, some family members of the killed American soldiers at the Kabul airport explosion remain unconvinced.
A family member of a slain American soldier told the Associated Press, “Tyler Andrews saw what he saw and knows what he saw.”
While the military’s investigation team did not discredit Tyler’s statements, they stated he was mistaken. The military review team indicated that its findings suggest the attack was not preventable, and reports of threats prior to the bombing were highly ambiguous.
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