The Pentagon announced on Thursday that 13 U.S. service members were killed and 18 others were injured during the explosion outside the airport in the Afghan capital of Kabul earlier in the day. Dozens of civilians were also killed.
During the Pentagon press briefing, CENTCOM Commander Kenneth McKenzie announced those figures during what he called “a hard day today.”
McKenzie said that ISIS-K, which is the Islamic State branch in Central and South Asia, was behind the suicide bombing outside the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport. The airport has been where evacuations of Americans and Afghan allies and others has taken place over almost the past couple weeks.
McKenzie warned, “We believe there is a desire to continue those attacks and we expect those attacks to continue.” He also said that “if we can find who is associated with this, we will go after them.” He added, “24/7 we are looking for them.”
The deaths of the U.S. service members were the first in Afghanistan since Feb. 8, 2020.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
UPDATE 11:59 am ET FRIDAY: The Pentagon corrected the record on Friday and said that there was one explosion, not two.