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The suicide bombing killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members throughout the messy US withdrawal in August 2021.
The USA army has introduced it’s going to conduct interviews with service members concerning the occasions main as much as a lethal suicide bombing close to Kabul’s airport in August 2021, when the nation was withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan.
On Friday, the Pentagon’s Central Command stated that it will interview about two dozen individuals concerning the explosion that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members. However it emphasised it will not reopen its investigation into the bombing.
“The aim of those interviews is to make sure we do our due diligence with the brand new data that has come to mild, that the related voices are absolutely heard and that we take these accounts and study them significantly and totally so the details are laid naked,” Central Command spokesperson Michael Lawhorn stated in a press release.
The bombing created widespread bloodshed throughout the remaining days of the US withdrawal, which marked the top of its long-running battle in Afghanistan.
Crowds of Afghans had gathered at Hamid Karzai Worldwide Airport in Kabul in an effort to depart the nation, after the Taliban overthrew the US-backed authorities and captured town.
However on the afternoon of August 26, 2021, as civilians thronged across the airport’s Abbey Gate, a suicide bomber is believed to have detonated a belt containing explosives.
The bombing — and the army’s response to it — has heightened criticism that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic and haphazard. Questions have additionally arisen about whether or not the US may have carried out extra to forestall the bombing.
A minimum of one former service member injured within the blast has beforehand said that the army by no means interviewed him concerning the occasions of that day, and he expressed his perception that the bombing was preventable.
Others have pointed to the US’s botched response to the bombing: A US drone strike in Kabul, a number of days afterwards, additionally killed 10 harmless individuals, together with seven kids.
An investigation by US Central Command concluded in November 2021 that the airport assault “was not preventable on the tactical degree with out degrading the mission to maximise the variety of evacuees”.
Nevertheless, former Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews instructed a Congressional listening to in March that members of the army had been given an outline of a gaggle of males planning on finishing up an assault however had acquired no response from above.
Greater than two years after the withdrawal, many Afghans searching for refuge from the Taliban stay in limbo, with few choices for escape.
Afghans who assisted the US army could also be eligible for Particular Immigrant Visas within the US, however the system for processing purposes has skilled extreme backlogs. Critics additionally say too few immigration choices exist for Afghans who labored with the US in different methods, a reality that would go away them in peril below Taliban rule.
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