Consider This from NPR - 12 U.S. Service Members Killed In Kabul: What We Know About The Attack

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

12 U.S. service members were killed in an attack at the Kabul airport on Thursday. They were among some 5,000 U.S. troops evacuating American citizens, Afghans allies, and others from Kabul. At least 60 Afghans were also killed.New York Times journalist Matthieu Aikens describes the scene at the airport moments after the attack. NPR's Quil Lawrence reports on reaction from the Pentagon. For more coverage of unfolding events in Afghanistan, listen to NPR's morning news podcast, Up First, via Apple, Spotify, Google, or Pocket Casts. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The security alert from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul went out around 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time, Thursday morning. It instructed Americans to leave the Kabul airport immediately and avoid traveling there after reports of explosions and gunfire. Just under three hours later, the tragic news. And this was, of course, what everybody feared. Depending on Press Secretary John Kirby putting out a statement just a short time ago, saying a number of U.S. service members were killed in these twin explosions, what he called a complex operation, a complex attack at Kabul International Airport, where there are more than 5,000 U.S. service members at the moment. The last U.S. casualty in Afghanistan was in February

2020. Now, as of when we're recording this, on Thursday afternoon, at least 12 U.S. service members are among the dead in these attacks at the Kabul airport and during what was supposed to be the final 100 hours of America's two-decade military operation in Afghanistan. The hospital was overwhelmed with patients. We had approximately 60 patients coming in, 16 dead on arrival. Rosella Micho is president of Emergency, an NGO operating a hospital in Kabul. 16 people dead on arrival, she told NPR Thursday. And a problem growing even more critical? With the airport in disarray, there's concern that medical supplies could run low.

If we don't see any opening of the airport, this is going to be a serious problem for us, but for the entire country. Coming up, what we know about what happened at the Kabul airport and what it means for the Biden administration's goal of completing evacuations from Afghanistan in just a few days' time. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Thursday, August 26th. Kim, the first person of color and female chair of the English department at Pembroke University. The Chair is streaming now only on Netflix.

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It's Consider This from NPR. You may be listening to this on Friday morning or later, and we want to remind you that NPR's morning news podcast, Up First, is also a good source of information right now. Here is what we know as of Thursday afternoon, Eastern Time, in Washington, D.C. Twelve U.S. service members have been killed, in addition to, quote, a number of Afghan civilians. The result of two blasts, one near the Afghan capital's Karzai Airport, the other at a nearby hotel. Here is what the head of U.S. Central Command, General Kenneth McKenzie, said this afternoon at the Pentagon. It's a hard day today. As you know, two suicide bombers,

assessed to have been ISIS fighters, detonated in the vicinity of the Abbey Gate at Hamad Karzai International Airport and in the vicinity of the Barron Hotel, which is immediately adjacent. The attack on the Abbey Gate was followed by a number of ISIS gunmen who opened fire on civilians and military forces. NPR is covering this from multiple places. We start with some of the harrowing moments on the ground in Kabul, which is where we reached reporter Matthew Akins of the New York Times this morning. He had managed to get close to the Abbey Gate, the airport entrance we just heard General McKenzie mention. I asked Akins what he was seeing, what he was learning in the moments after these explosions. of people that had gathered at the Abbey Gate on the south side of the airport where people were lining up for hours to try to show the foreign soldiers, American soldiers, their documents

in the hopes of being allowed in. A desperate hope because very few are allowed in. And in this huge crush of people today, there was at least one blast. Dozens of people killed and more injured. So it was a terrible scene. I arrived afterward and the Taliban had blocked off the area and they were trying to clear it. And they said the situation was out of control. There were bodies everywhere that foreigners had been hit. How close were you able to get? What were you actually able to see firsthand? We weren't actually able to get up to the blast site. So we were speaking with people who had been there and we were speaking with the Taliban guards who were quite agitated and trying to clear people from the area, branching pipes and lengths of cable. When you got there, it was calm. The

Taliban was trying to, as you say, clear the area and restore some form of control. I wouldn't say it was calm. It was a very tense situation. Taliban were yelling and trying to forcibly clear people out. And we could hear sounds of firing from inside the airport, as well as sirens. Were you able to see, are flights able to take off? What is the impact on the evacuation effort? There have been flights taking off.

We saw flights taking off. So it seems the evacuation is now continuing. So then you tried to go to the hospital where some of the people who were hurt in this attack, in these twin attacks, were taken. What was that road like, trying to get from the airport to the trauma center well we read a motorcycle usually to get around traffic so we were able to get there fairly quickly i was a

photographer and just a big crowd gathered up right beside the gates of emergency hospital which is trauma hospital in cobble just ambulance after ambulance was arriving you know in front of the anxious eyes of this crowd and they were were wheeling bodies of people, you know, injured people into the hospital. Some clearly very badly injured, unconscious. Some of them were children. Their relatives were weeping nearby. Yeah. If I may ask, are you, it sounds like you are able to move around, you are able to report freely at this point? It's a very tense situation in Kabul, which requires a lot of caution, especially around the airport.

But the Taliban has made many assurances to foreign journalists that they will be allowed to continue working. We've met with the spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, who's issued us letters of permission, which we actually used today to get through some of the checkpoints. And they worked somewhat to our surprise. So far, we are able to continue working and report the story from the ground. That's own Quill Lawrence has been learning more about the attack at the Kabul airport from the Pentagon, including how it may impact the U.S. evacuation effort, which had been scheduled to conclude August 31st. Quill spoke to Adi Cornish on Thursday afternoon.

Quill, Pentagon officials had been briefing reporters earlier this afternoon. How did they describe what happened? Well, they were talking about what is the worst single attack on American troops in 10 years in the Afghan war. And General McKenzie, the head of CENTCOM, was talking about the job that these mostly Marines at the gate are doing, where they have to get right up close to people in order to search them to prevent just this from happening, particularly from a bomb getting onto a plane. And what was also striking was how much he spoke about cooperation with the Taliban. He said that the Taliban have been providing a perimeter and have been searching people on the way through,

and he seemed to have some faith, at least, in those searches. He said they weren't always doing a good job, obviously, but he did not think necessarily that the Taliban would have let this suicide bomber through. That doesn't seem to be in the interest right now, and he said that there's been enough cooperation so far that he was continuing to cooperate with them and talking about possibly having the Taliban move their perimeter out. What did he say about the group that has claimed responsibility? Yeah, well, we have some claims on Twitter video. There's a video on Twitter circulating of a member of the Islamic State Khorasan, the ISIS-K group, claiming responsibility.

At the time of the briefing, he wasn't able to confirm that completely, but that seems to be the group most people suspect. They are an enemy of the Taliban. It has not been seen in the Taliban's interest to let this sort of chaos reign. This cooperation they have is to help get the Americans out the door as fast as they can on that August 31st deadline. So he seemed to think that that's what they were doing to help this happen. But he said they'd been anticipating an attack like this. There had been a warning to American citizens to stay away from the gates of the airport just some hours before this blast took place. So they must have had some intelligence.

How secure is the airport then? And what does this mean in terms of the U.S. mission, which is focused on meeting at August 31st deadline? Yeah, I mean, the general mentioned that this isn't a job just focused on Americans protecting themselves. They have to put themselves in harm's way in order to evacuate American citizens and all of these vulnerable Afghans. So the airport is not completely secure. It can't be letting 104,000 people in now since the 14th. So he did say that they're going to continue this mission. The plan is designed to operate while under stress and under attack,

and we will continue to do that. We will coordinate very carefully to make sure that it's safe for American citizens to come to the airfield. If it's not, we'll tell them to hold and then we'll, you know, we'll work other ways to try to get them to the airfield. Now, he said that they are committed to keep flying people out. He said there had even been flights going out in the last several hours, which is impressive. You thought there'd been a complete lockdown. But what will continue is this chaotic and ad hoc system of getting people into the airport. And there are tens of thousands of people who still want to get in there. NPR correspondent Quill Lawrence. Again, the situation in Afghanistan is changing

fast. If you are hearing this on Friday morning, there's a link in our episode notes to NPR's Morning News podcast up first, where you can hear more coverage. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.