KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – American forces working under heightened security and threats of another attack pressed ahead with the evacuation from Kabul’s airport Friday, the day after a deadly suicide bombing wrote a devastating closing chapter on the United States’ withdrawal from its war in Afghanistan.
The death toll rose to 169 Afghans, a number that could increase as authorities examine fragmented remains, and 13 U.S. service members, making Thursday’s one of the deadliest attacks since U.S. led forces entered Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago.
The White House and the Pentagon warned there could be more bloodshed ahead of President Joe Biden’s fast-approaching deadline Tuesday to end the airlift and withdraw American forces. The next few days “will be our most dangerous period to date” in the evacuation, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Thursday’s bombing – blamed on Afghanistan’s offshoot of the Islamic State group, an enemy of both the Taliban and the West – marked one of the most lethal terror attacks the country has seen. The U.S. said it was the deadliest day for American forces in Afghanistan since 2011.
Around the world, newly arriving Afghan evacuees, many clutching babies and bare handfuls of belongings in plastic bags, stepped off evacuation flights in the United States, in Albania, in Belgium and beyond. In Kabul on Friday, Afghan families looked for loved ones among bodies, placed along a hospital sidewalk for identification, of bombing victims who died pleading for a seat on the U.S.-run airlifts.