The United States launched a drone strike against the Islamic State in Afghanistan early Saturday, two days after President Joe Biden vowed revenge for a suicide attack that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and that the deadline for complete evacuation was running out.
In a statement from Saturday, Biden said the drone attack “was not the last.”
“I said we would go to the group responsible for the attack on our innocent troops and civilians in Kabul, and we have it,” Biden wrote. “We will continue to prosecute anyone involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Saturday morning that the strike killed two “high-profile” members of the Islamic State in Khorasan province, or ISIS-K, an Afghan branch of the Islamic State. . A third person was injured.
The strike in the Nangarhar region killed an ISIS-K planner and a facilitator, but Kirby did not provide further details or confirm what role, if any, they played on Thursday in the suicide attack at Kabul airport that killed at least 170 people.
“The fact that two of these individuals no longer walk the surface of the earth is a good thing,” he said.
Navy Captain William Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said earlier that no civilian casualties were known.
The White House had warned that ISIS-K, a rival to the Taliban, was likely to attack again in the last days of the US withdrawal. And Biden had promised that terrorists on Thursday’s horror could expect retribution.
“We’ll chase you and make you pay,” Biden said.
Several family members of the assassinated Americans have criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the withdrawal agreed upon by President Donald Trump.
“I’ve lost my son, but there are still Marines out there,” Jim McCollum, Rylee’s 20-year-old son, told The Daily Beast among the dead. “We gave them everything they needed and we’re stuck at the airport. I’m scared shit to see what happens next and what comes next.”