US airstrike hits suicide bombers targeting Kabul airport

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. officials accidental an American drone onslaught has deed a conveyance carrying aggregate Islamic State termination bombers heading for the Kabul airport.

A subject authoritative said the onslaught connected Sunday caused “significant secondary explosions” indicating the beingness of a important magnitude of explosive worldly successful the vehicle.

Two elder U.S. officials said the U.S. believes it was a palmy onslaught and that the intended people was hit.

This is the 2nd airstrike the U.S. has conducted against the militant group, which claimed work for the termination bombing Thursday astatine the Kabul airdrome gross that killed 13 U.S. work members and scores of Afghans struggling to get retired of the state and flight the caller Taliban rule.

The officials said Sunday that archetypal reports bespeak determination were nary civilian casualties caused by the airstrike, but 1 authoritative said they are assessing reports of immoderate different collateral damage.

There person been reports of an detonation astatine a location adjacent the airport, but it wasn’t wide the 2 explosions were connected. The officials spoke connected information of anonymity to sermon subject operations.

The strikes travel a time aft the U.S. Embassy successful Kabul urged Americans to “immediately” permission the airdrome Saturday owed to a “specific, credible threat.”

In a information alert, the embassy said each U.S. citizens successful the vicinity of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) should leave, including those successful the South (Airport Circle) gate, the caller Ministry of the Interior, and the gross adjacent the Panjshir Petrol presumption connected the northwest side.

The alert besides said U.S. citizens should debar traveling to the airdrome and enactment distant from each airdrome gates arsenic the menace is assessed.

Also, President Joe Biden announced Sunday day that U.S. commanders informed him that different onslaught successful Kabul is highly apt successful the adjacent 24 to 36 hours. He said the concern connected the crushed continues to beryllium highly unsafe and the menace of violent attacks connected the airdrome remains high.

Biden said helium has directed commanders to instrumentality each imaginable measurement to prioritize unit protection.

A White House authoritative told reporters Saturday evening that a full of 2,000 radical were evacuated from Kabul from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET connected Saturday. A full of 11 U.S. subject flights carried retired 1,400 evacuees and 7 conjugation flights carried 600, the authoritative said.