WASHINGTON, Aug 28: The US military said today that it carried out a drone strike in Afghanistan, killing two high-profile “planners and facilitators” of the Islamic State, hours after President Joe Biden promised to retaliate for the twin blasts at the Kabul airport that killed 169 Afghans and 13 American soldiers.
The Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate, dubbed Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, had claimed responsibility for the attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday.
“Two high-profile ISIS targets were killed, and one was wounded. And we know of zero civilian casualties,” Maj Gen Hank Taylor, deputy director of the Joint Staff For Regional Operations, told reporters on Saturday.
“Without specifying any future plans, I will say that we will continue to have the ability to defend ourselves and to leverage over the horizon capability to conduct counterterrorism operations as needed,” he added.
He declined to provide any further details about the planners and facilitators of ISIS-K who were killed in the drone strike. It wasn’t immediately known if the ISIS-K planners targeted in the drone strike were involved specifically in Thursday’s Kabul airport attack.
The drone strike came a day after President Biden vowed to “hunt” down the terrorists and make them “pay” for the Kabul airport attack and ordered his commanders to develop plans to strike back at them. (PTI)
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