The ruling Taliban government has confirmed it has killed the Islamic State leader and mastermind, that bombed the Kabul airport in 2021. Officials of the United State also confirmed the news saying, the Taliban killed the bomber weeks ago, but it needed time to confirmed his death. His name is yet to be released.
The August 2021 bombing of the Kabul airport took out 183 lives, including 170 civilians and 13 soldiers of United State Army, as people were trying to flee from the re-formed Taliban government, that had taken over governance from the Afghani government, after U.S announced it was pulling out from Afghanistan.
US officials said, they had determined through intelligence gathering and monitoring of the region, that the leader had died, though they did not provide further details on how they had learned that he was responsible for the bombing.
“Experts in the government are at high confidence that this individual was indeed the key individual responsible,” a senior U.S official said. The death of the leader was known to U.S officials this April. It is yet to be known, whether he was a targeted operation by the Taliban or he was killed as a result of the ongoing fighting between the Taliban and the Islamic State.
The U.S Marine Corps officials began notifying the families of the affected soldiers, about the death of the I.S leader. Darin Hoover, father of Marine Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover who died in the blast, confirmed that he had been notified of the news by the Marine Corps. “They could not tell me any details of the operation, but they did state that their sources are highly trusted, and they’ve got it from several different sources that this individual was indeed killed,” Mr. Hoover disclosed.
The blast came after Western governments had warned their citizen in Afghanistan to stay away from Kabul, because they suspect an imminent threat of suicide attack by the IS-K, the Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The attack happened around 18:00 local time, on August 26, 2021, at the Abbey Gate to the airport, when a suicide bomber walked into the middle of families waiting outside the gate. Huge crowds were gathering in the area, hoping to be accepted on to an evacuation flight as US troops pulled out of Afghanistan.
Among the casualties were two British nationals and the child of a British national, the UK government said at the time. The US carried out a drone strike in Kabul days later, saying it had targeted a suicide bomber, only to admit that the missile had killed 10 civilians, including seven children.
The U.S government later offered a $10m reward to anyone with information leading to the arrest or conviction of those responsible for the attack, or for the capture of ISIS-K leader, Sanaullah Ghafari.
The End of War
The August 2021 pull out marked the end of the United States longest war, after military operations were carried out against the then Taliban leaders, led by Muhammed Mulla, the al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the leader and mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attack.
The pull out began the end of the Afghan government which the U.S has backed for two decades, and the return of the Taliban rule, which much of the Afghanis wanted to escape their governance.
The Biden administration was criticized both home and abroad, in the aftermath of pull out. Concerns have been raised over the abandonment of Afghans and of US weaponry. It is estimated that, the U.S government left over $7billion of weaponry, to the Afghani government, which was later outed from power by the Taliban. One US Marine injured in the blast, described the pull-out as a “catastrophe” during Republican-led hearings examining the withdrawal.
Michael McCaul, a Republican House representative, said the IS leader’s death was welcome news but do not deliver full justice for the families of the US soldiers who died. “If these reports are true, any time a terrorist is taken off the board is a good day,” Mr McCaul said. “But this doesn’t diminish the Biden administration’s culpability for the failures that led to the attack at Abbey Gate.”
President Joe Biden’s request for a broad review examining the pull-out, was released earlier this month. The review laid the blame on President Donald Trump for the deadly withdrawal, saying the Biden administration had been “severely constrained” by Mr Trump’s decisions, including a 2020 deal with the Taliban to end the war.
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