Washington, United States.
Joe Biden solemnly receives on Sunday at a military base the remains of 13 U.S. soldiers killed in an attack on Kabul, a difficult ceremony at a time when the president is under fire from the opposition for his handling of the Afghan crisis .
Dressed in a black suit and mask, Biden arrived with his wife Jill – also dressed in mourning – at the Dover, Delaware base.
This military base on the east coast, about two hours from Washington, has been synonymous in the minds of Americans for decades of the poignant return of the remains of fallen soldiers in coffins covered with the national flag.
The Biden met privately on Sunday morning with the families of the dead soldiers, before praying at local noon (16:00 GMT) in front of their remains, during a solemn tribute.
The Pentagon had released the identities of the 13 soldiers killed in Thursday’s attack on Saturday.
Of these, five were 20 years old, the duration of the longest war waged by the United States, which began in 2001 in Afghanistan.
The case of a 23-year-old girl killed in the attack aroused great emotion in the country. A week before the attack she had been photographed with a baby in her arms during the chaotic evacuation operations at Kabul airport.
see: The latest images of the 13 U.S. Marines who died in the attack on Kabul airport
This attack, claimed by the Islamic State group in Khorasan (EI-K), killed more than a hundred people.
In retaliation, the United States carried out a drone attack on Afghanistan, killing two members of the Islamic State group, and has warned it would not be “the last.” Biden said Saturday that a new attack was “very likely.”
While the presidential couple was with the families of the military, the Pentagon announced that it had destroyed a vehicle in Kabul, “eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat” against the airport itself.