US says it has killed ISIS-K planner in drone strike after Kabul airport attack

Washington: The US military has said that it carried out a drone strike on Saturday at an ISIS- Khorasan (ISIS-K) group in eastern Afghanistan, killing a “planner” of this week’s terrorist attack at the Kabul airport.

“US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner,” Captain Bill Urban, spokesperson for the US Central Command, said in a statement.

“The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan,” Captain Urban said. “Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties.”

The announcement did not identify the targeted individual but indicated that this could be the first of many reprisals at ISIS-K targets for Thursday’s terrorist attacks at the Kabul airport.

Over 100 people, including 13 US service members and 22 Taliban fighters, were killed in the attacks.

ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attacks, prompting an immediate response from US President Joe Biden who addressed his nation on Thursday evening and vowed to punish the perpetrators,

“We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” the president declared.

Biden also ordered American military commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K “assets, leadership and facilities.”

The attack at the airport was one of the deadliest in nearly two decades of the US-led war in Afghanistan.

White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said at a Friday afternoon news briefing that the militants were planning another attack in Kabul.

“The threat is ongoing, and it is active. Our troops are still in danger,” she said.

The attack at the Kabul airport has enraged Americans who were already unhappy with the Biden administration for Kabul’s collapse last week.

New York Times noted that President Biden’s pledge to “hunt down” the terrorists responsible for the attack “had grim echoes of warnings President George W. Bush made after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Late on Friday, the US Embassy in Kabul warned US citizens still at the Kabul airport to “leave immediately.”