The U.S. government has confirmed that 13 of its military personnel were killed in the bomb explosions at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
Apart from the U.S. soldiers, about 77 people were killed in the explosion, AlJazeera reports.
More than 150 wounded persons are being treated at the emergency hospital in Kabul and other locations.
A Pentagon official who addressed journalists in Washington on Thursday said the attackers are believed to be linked to ISIS-K, Islamic State Khorasan, a splinter group of disaffected Pakistani Taliban created six years ago.
The Taliban had earlier condemned the attack, saying it occurred in an area of the airport manned by U.S. soldiers.
The Kabul airport has been under the global spotlight since thousands of people rushed there last week in a bid to leave the country after the Taliban took over the government.
As the August 31st deadline set by the U.S. government nears, Western forces have evacuated about 13,400 people out of Kabul on 91 military cargo aircraft flights in the last 24 hours.
Since the mass evacuations began after Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 14, approximately 95,700 people have been airlifted out of Afghanistan.
U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said Wednesday that there may be about 1,500 Americans in Afghanistan yet to be evacuated.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressman and member of the House Intelligence Committee Jim Himes has reflected on the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying the way things played out was regrettable.
“When President Biden took office, there were more troops guarding Capital Hill than Afghanistan,” he told the BBC.
“With [for example] 2,500 troops in a country you’ve got really the ability to do just about nothing but guard the embassy and perhaps the airport.”
He added that there would be investigations into how things happened the way they did, but said the focus now would be on making sure “the mission can be completed… [which will only be] when all of the people we want out of Afghanistan are in fact out.”
