WASHINGTON — The suicide bomber waited until the last possible moment, U.S. officials said.A crowd straining to get into Hamid Karzai International Airport had converged on Abbey Gate, a main entryway manned by Marines and other service members. The troops knew that they could be targeted in an attack; just the day before, the State Department had warned of a “credible” threat at three gates at the airport, where more than 5,000 American troops had helped to evacuate more than 100,000 people in less than two weeks. Abbey Gate was on the list.Airport security had closed two of the gates, but decided to leave Abbey Gate open, U.S. officials said. They believed that earlier in the day, Taliban commanders and fighters manning checkpoints along the airport route had foiled two possible attempts by militants to reach the airport.But the third one got through.At 5:48 p.m., the bomber, wearing a 25-pound explosive vest under clothing, walked up to the group of Americans who were frisking people hoping to enter the complex. He waited, officials said, until just before he was about to be searched by the American troops. And then he detonated the bomb, which was unusually large for a suicide vest, killing himself and igniting an attack that would leave dozens of people dead, including 13 American service members.“This is close-up war — the breath of the person you are searching is upon you,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of United States Central Command, said on Thursday after the attack, describing the face-to-face contact between Marines at the airport gate and Afghans they must search before allowing them to enter.Pentagon officials said they were still piecing together the chain of events that took place at Abbey Gate on Thursday. There will be after-action reviews and storyboards with detailed lists of what led up to that moment. There will be questions: Why were so many service members grouped so close together? How did the bomber evade the Taliban checkpoints? Did someone let him through?As the scope of the damage became clearer, health officials in Kabul raised the death toll, saying at least 170 people had been killed. Afghans seeking to escape Taliban rule continued to stream to the airport on Friday, but the size of the crowd was estimated in the hundreds, down from the thousands who were there when the blast occurred. The airport remained largely locked down, although evacuation flights continued.Just after 2 p.m. Friday, as another gray-tailed U.S. aircraft lifted into the sky from the airport, this one carrying the flag-draped coffins of the 13 Americans, the anguish from Thursday’s bombing spread from Kabul to Kansas. At the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, service members were bracing for the ritual of dressing and preparing yet another group of American troops killed in Afghanistan.“I’m never been one for politics and I’m not going to start now,” Marilyn Soviak, the sister of Maxton Soviak, a Navy corpsman from Ohio who was among the dead, posted on Instagram. “What I will say is that my beautiful, intelligent, beat-to-the-sound of his own drum, annoying, charming baby brother was killed yesterday helping to save lives.”Just after the bomb went off, Defense Department officials said, fighters nearby began firing weapons. The officials said that some of the Americans and Afghans at Abbey Gate might have been hit by that gunfire. There was so much confusion in the aftermath of the explosion that the military initially reported that a second suicide bombing had taken place at nearby Baron Hotel. That turned out to be false, according to Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, the Joint Staff deputy director for regional operations.Video{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","@id":"https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000007941084/kabul-afghanistan-airport-explosions-casualties.html","description":"The Pentagon said at least 13 U.S. service members were killed and 15 wounded in the attack near an airport gate on Thursday. Scores of Afghan civilians were killed and wounded.","url":"https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000007941084/kabul-afghanistan-airport-explosions-casualties.html","name":"Islamic State Suicide Attack Kills Dozens at Kabul Airport","thumbnailUrl":["https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/26/world/26hp-afghanistan-bombing1/26hp-afghanistan-bombing1-videoSixteenByNine1050-v2.jpg","https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/26/world/26hp-afghanistan-bombing1/26afghanistan-bombing-superJumbo.jpg","https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/26/world/26hp-afghanistan-bombing1/26hp-afghanistan-bombing1-square640-v2.jpg"],"embedUrl":"https://www.nytimes.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000007941084"By: Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Title: As U.S. Troops Searched Afghans, a Bomber in the Crowd Moved In
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/politics/marines-kabul-airport-attack.html
Published Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2021 23:46:35 +0000
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