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US

Pentagon’s John Kirby says latest airstrike indicates Russian forces are ‘broadening their target sets’

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Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Russian forces are “broadening their target sets” after rockets hit a Ukrainian military base near the Polish border overnight.

“Look, this is the third now military facility or airfield that the Russians had struck in western Ukraine in just the last couple of days,” Kirby told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, on Sunday. “So, clearly, at least from an airstrike perspective, they’re broadening their target sets.”

The Yavoriv International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, located about 10 miles from Poland and an hour west of Lviv, sustained damage from the airstrike. Lviv Gov. Maksym Kozytskiy said at least 35 people were killed and another 134 injured during the attack on the Ukrainian military training base. Kirby confirmed no Americans were present.

Raddatz followed up, citing Ukraine’s defense minister calling the strike “a terror attack near the NATO border” and “saying action must be taken to stop this, close the sky.”

“Could a no-fly zone have stopped this?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Kirby responded. “Look, I mean, no-fly zone has a nice air policing kind of sound to it. But I participated in one as a young officer on an aircraft carrier way back in the early ’90s. It is combat. You have to be willing to shoot and to be shot at.” He added that U.S. troops in Ukraine “leads to war with Russia.”

Raddatz asked, “If those attacks on military supply centers cross into Poland — and I know that is a fear of the United States and the NATO allies — what changes? Kamala Harris just reaffirmed the pledge — the Article 5 pledge — to defend NATO members. If they strike in Poland, what happens?”

“We take our Article 5 commitment very seriously and the vice president was pretty firm about that on her recent visit, so has been [Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austin,” Kirby answered. “An armed attack against one is considered an armed attack against all. That is why, Martha, we continue to flow and to move and to reposition forces and capabilities along NATO’s eastern flank to make sure that we can defend every inch of NATO territory if we need to.”

“Now, there’s no reason we should need to because there’s no reason that there should be war in Ukraine as it is, and we’ve made it very clear to Russia that NATO territory will be defended not just by the United States, but by our allies,” Kirby later added.

“But this was just 10 miles from that border,” Raddatz pressed again, saying, “I just crossed that border the other day. Doesn’t this change the way you look at things? They’re getting closer and closer to our NATO allies.”

“I can tell you that we have been consistently concerned about NATO’s eastern flank and that airspace and, of course, that ground space on that flank of NATO. And we continue to look for ways to bolster the defenses of our NATO allies,” Kirby said.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled a meeting Friday at Russia’s request to discuss the unfounded Russian claim that the U.S. is working with Ukraine on developing biochemical weapons, an allegation the Biden administration has vehemently denied.

“It is of the Russian playbook that that which they accuse you of they’re planning to do now,” Kirby said. “Now, again, we haven’t seen anything into it indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but we’re watching this very, very closely.”

On Friday, President Joe Biden said Russia “would pay a severe price” if any biochemical weapons are utilized during the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

But as Ukrainian leaders plead for a no-fly zone over their country, Markian Lubkivskyi, an adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, said during an earlier “This Week” interview that Ukraine was “still waiting for the weapons, for the aircraft, for the anti-air systems to protect Ukrainians from the air.”

Kirby, however, said assistance would “continue to flow” to the country.

“The kinds of things we know they most need, the kinds of things that they’re using so well, we’re going to continue to help get them into their hands. And we know that it is working, that they are receiving them and they are using them.”

“I mean they have impressed everybody around the world and certainly they have impressed the Russians who have been increasingly flummoxed and frustrated about their lack of progress because of this Ukrainian resistance,” he added.

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World

Russian airstrike hits base in western Ukraine, kills 35

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LVIV, Ukraine — Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine’s western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people. The strike followed Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia’s grinding invasion.

More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling training facility that is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the closest border point with Poland, according to the governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Poland is a key location for routing Western military aid to Ukraine.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Lviv had largely been spared the scale of destruction unfolding further east and become a destination for residents escaping bombarded cities and for many of the nearly 2.6 million refugees who have fled the country.

The training center in Yavoriv appears to be the most westward target struck so far in the 18-day invasion. The facility, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the United States and other NATO countries.

It has also hosted international NATO drills. As such, the site symbolizes what has long been a Russian complaint: That the NATO alliance of 30 member countries is moving ever closer to Russia’s borders. Russian has demanded that Ukraine drop its ambitions to join NATO.

Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most of the missiles fired Sunday “were shot down because the air defense system worked.” The ones that got through through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, countries that also are NATO allies. The airport, which includes a military airfield as well as a runway for civilian flights, also was targeted Friday.

Fighting also raged in multiple areas of the country overnight. Ukrainian authorities said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a children’s resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and refugees were sheltering, wounding 32 people.

Another airstrike hit a westward-bound train evacuating people from the east, killing one person and injuring another, Donetsk’s chief regional administrator said.

To the north, in the city of Chernihiv, one person was killed and another injured in a Russian airstrike that destroyed a residential block, emergency services said.

Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.

In Irpin, a suburb about 12 miles (20 kilometers) northwest of central Kyiv, bodies lay out in the open Saturday on streets and in a park.

“When I woke up in the morning, everything was covered in smoke, everything was dark. We don’t know who is shooting and where,” resident Serhy Protsenko said as he walked through his neighborhood. Explosions sounded in the distance. “We don’t have any radio or information.”

Chief regional administrator Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces appeared to be trying to blockade and paralyze the capital with day and night shelling of the suburbs. Kuleba said Russian agents were in the capital and its suburbs, marking out possible future targets.

He vowed that any all-out assault would meet stiff resistance, saying: “We’re getting ready to defend Kyiv, and we’re prepared to fight for ourselves.”

Talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire again failed Saturday, and the U.S. announced plans to provide another $200 million to Ukraine for weapons. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned other nations that sending equipment to bolster Ukraine’s military was “an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.”

Russian soldiers pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach the battered and encircled port city of Mariupol, where more than 1,500 people have died, a Ukrainian official said. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces captured Mariupol’s eastern outskirts, tightening their siege of the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.

“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly address to the nation Saturday.

Zelenskyy reported that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had died since the Russian invasion began Feb. 24.

The first major city to fall, earlier this month, was Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 290,000 residents. Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russians were using blackmail and bribery in an attempt to force local officials to form a “pseudo-republic” in the southern Kherson region, much like those in Donetsk and Luhansk, two eastern regions where pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014. One of the pretexts Russia used to invade was that it had to protect the separatist regions.

Zelenskyy again deplored NATO’s refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defense assets, though he didn’t elaborate. U.S. President Joe Biden announced another $200 million in aid to Ukraine, with an additional $13 billion included in a bill that has passed the House and should pass the Senate within days. NATO has said that imposing a no-fly zone could lead to a wider war with Russia.

Moscow has said it would establish humanitarian corridors out of conflict zones, but Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of disrupting those paths and firing on civilians. Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities, according to the World Health Organization.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said just nine of 14 agreed-upon corridors were open on Saturday, and that about 13,000 people had used them to evacuate around the country.

The leaders of France and Germany spoke Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a failed attempt to reach a cease-fire. To end the war, Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO and adopt a neutral status; acknowledge the Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014; recognize the independence of separatist regions in the country’s east; and agree to demilitarize.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed along with many civilians, including at least 79 Ukrainian children, the government said.

The Russian invaders appear to have struggled more than expected against determined Ukrainian fighters. Still, Russia’s stronger military threatens to grind down Ukrainian forces. The United Nations has said the fighting has displaced millions of Ukrainians within the country on top of the millions who have left.

Elena Yurchuk, a nurse from the northern city of Chernihiv, was in a Romanian train station Saturday with her teenage son, Nikita, unsure whether their home was still standing.

“We have nowhere to go back to,” said Yurchuk, 44, a widow who hopes to find work in Germany. “Nothing left.”

———

Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov in Mariupol and other reporters around the world contributed.

———

Follow the AP’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Airstrike hits Ukraine maternity hospital, 17 reported hurt

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MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital Wednesday in the besieged port city of Mariupol amid growing warnings from the West that Moscow’s invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn. Ukrainian officials said the attack wounded at least 17 people.

The ground shook more than a mile away when the Mariupol complex was hit by a series of blasts that blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying out a heavily pregnant and bleeding woman on a stretcher as light snow fell on burning and mangled cars and trees shattered by the blast.

Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, a blast crater extended at least two stories deep.

“Today Russia committed a huge crime,” said Volodymir Nikulin, a top regional police official, standing in the ruins. “It is a war crime without any justification.”

In Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook. No one was wounded, he said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under the rubble.

“A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?” Zelenskyy asked in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express his horror at the airstrike. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”

He urged the West to impose even tougher sanctions, so Russia “no longer has any possibility to continue this genocide.”

Video shared by Zelenskyy showed cheerfully painted hallways strewn with twisted metal.

“There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenseless,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held “to account for his terrible crimes.”

The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on health facilities and ambulances since the fighting began, killing 10 people. It was not clear if that number included the assault on the maternity hospital.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken condemned Russia’s “unconscionable attacks” in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, the State Department said.

Two weeks into Russia’s assault on Ukraine, its military is struggling more than expected, but Putin’s invading force of more than 150,000 troops retains possibly insurmountable advantages in firepower as it bears down on key cities.

Despite often heavy shelling on populated areas, American military officials reported little change on the ground over the past 24 hours, other than Russian progress on the cities of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to assess the larger military situation.

Authorities announced new cease-fires to allow thousands of civilians to escape bombarded towns. Zelenskyy said three humanitarian corridors operated on Wednesday, from Sumy in the northeast near the Russian border, from suburbs of Kyiv and from Enerhodar, the southern town where Russian forces took over a large nuclear plant.

In all, he said, about 35,000 people got out. More evacuations were planned for Thursday.

People streamed out of Kyiv’s suburbs, many headed for the city center, as explosions were heard in the capital and air raid sirens sounded repeatedly. From there, the evacuees planned to board trains bound for western Ukrainian regions not under attack.

Civilians leaving the Kyiv suburb of Irpin were forced to make their way across the slippery wooden planks of a makeshift bridge, because the Ukrainians blew up the concrete span leading to Kyiv days ago to slow the Russian advance.

With sporadic gunfire echoing behind them, firefighters dragged an elderly man to safety in a wheelbarrow, a child gripped the hand of a helping soldier, and a woman inched her way along, cradling a fluffy cat inside her winter coat. They trudged past a crashed van with the words “Our Ukraine” written in the dust coating its windows.

“We have a short window of time at the moment,” said Yevhen Nyshchuk, a member of Ukraine’s territorial defense forces. “Even if there is a cease-fire right now, there is a high risk of shells falling at any moment.”

Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors over the past few days largely failed because of what the Ukrainians said were Russian attacks. But Putin, in a telephone call with Germany’s chancellor, accused militant Ukrainian nationalists of hampering the evacuations.

In Mariupol, a strategic city of 430,000 people on the Sea of Azov, local authorities hurried to bury the dead from the past two weeks of fighting in a mass grave. City workers dug a trench some 25 meters (yards) long at one of the city’s old cemeteries and made the sign of the cross as they pushed bodies wrapped in carpets or bags over the edge.

About 1,200 people have died in the nine-day siege of the city, Zelenskyy’s office said.

Nationwide, thousands are thought to have been killed, both civilians and soldiers, since Putin’s forces invaded. The U.N. estimates more than 2 million people have fled the country, the biggest exodus of refugees in Europe since the end of World War II.

The fighting knocked out power to the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant, raising fears about the spent radioactive fuel that is stored at the site and must be kept cool. But the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said it saw “no critical impact on safety” from the loss of power.

The crisis is likely to get worse as Moscow’s forces step up their bombardment of cities in response to what appear to be stronger Ukrainian resistance and heavier Russian losses than anticipated.

Echoing remarks from the director of the CIA a day earlier, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Russia’s assault will get “more brutal and more indiscriminate” as Putin tries to regain momentum.

The Biden administration warned that Russia might seek to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, rejecting Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it has invaded.

This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova — without evidence — accused Ukraine of running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claim “preposterous” and said it could be part of an attempt by Russia to lay the groundwork for its own use of such weapons against Ukraine.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said fighting continued northwest of Kyiv. Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol were being heavily shelled and remained encircled by Russian forces.

Russian forces are placing military equipment on farms and amid residential buildings in the northern city of Chernihiv, Ukraine’s military said. In the south, Russians in civilian clothes are advancing on the city of Mykolaiv, a Black Sea shipbuilding center of a half-million people, it said.

The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, is building up defenses in cities in the north, south and east, and forces around Kyiv are “holding the line” against the Russian offensive, authorities said.

On Wednesday, some of Ukraine’s volunteer fighters trained in a Kyiv park with rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

“I have only one son,” said Mykola Matulevskiy, a 64-year-old retired martial arts coach, who was with his son, Kostyantin. “Everything is my son.”

But now they will fight together: “It’s not possible to have it in another way because it’s our motherland. We must defend our motherland first of all.”

In Irpin, a town of 60,000, police officers and soldiers helped elderly residents from their homes. One man was hoisted out of a damaged structure on a makeshift stretcher, while another was pushed toward Kyiv in a shopping cart. Fleeing residents said they had been without power and water for the past four days.

Regional administration head Oleksiy Kuleba said the crisis for civilians is deepening in and around Kyiv, with the situation particularly dire in the suburbs.

The situation is even worse in Mariupol, where efforts to evacuate residents and deliver badly needed food, water and medicine failed Tuesday because of what the Ukrainians said were continued Russian attacks.

The city took advantage of a lull in the shelling Wednesday to hurriedly bury 70 people. Some were soldiers, but most were civilians.

The work was conducted efficiently and without ceremony. No mourners were present, no families to say their goodbyes.

One woman stood at the gates of the cemetery to ask whether her mother was among those being buried. She was.

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Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Felipe Dana and Andrew Drake in Kyiv contributed along with other reporters around the world.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Pentagon Chief Orders New Inquiry Into U.S. Airstrike That Killed Dozens in Syria

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But officials at Central Command did not follow up and failed to remind a subordinate military headquarters in Baghdad to do so, in what Capt. Bill Urban, a Central Command spokesman, described as “an administrative oversight.” As a result, senior military officials in Iraq and Florida never reviewed the strike, and the investigation technically remained open until the Times investigation.

Mr. Austin, who became defense secretary this year, received a classified briefing this month about the strike and the military’s handling of it from General McKenzie, who oversaw the air war in Syria.

In an email to the Senate Armed Services Committee this spring, the legal officer who witnessed the strike warned that “senior ranking U.S. military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process,” and that there was a good chance that “the highest levels of government remained unaware of what was happening on the ground.”

A spokesman for the Armed Services Committee, Chip Unruh, said that the panel “remains actively engaged and continues to look at the matter.” Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, announced this month that his panel would also investigate the strike and the military’s handling of it.

The Times investigation found that the bombing by Air Force F-15E attack jets had been called in by Task Force 9, a unit largely made up of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force. The task force was in charge of ground operations in Syria, working closely with Syrian Kurdish and Arab militia. Military personnel who spoke to The Times said the secretive task force circumvented oversight by claiming that a vast majority of its strikes required immediate action to protect allied troops from imminent threat. Often, military officers said, no such threat was present.

After The Times sent its findings to U.S. Central Command, the command acknowledged the attack for the first time. It said in a statement that the 80 deaths were justified because the task force had launched a self-defense strike against a group of fighters who were an imminent threat to allied forces on the ground.

Central Command told The Times that the strike had included three guided bombs: a 500-pound bomb that hit the initial group and two 2,000-pound bombs that targeted people fleeing the initial blast. The command later corrected itself, saying all three bombs were 500-pound munitions.

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How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria

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The Times investigation found that the bombing had been called in by a classified American special operations unit, Task Force 9, which was in charge of ground operations in Syria. The task force operated in such secrecy that at times it did not inform even its own military partners of its actions. In the case of the Baghuz bombing, the American Air Force command in Qatar had no idea the strike was coming, an officer who served at the command center said.

In the minutes after the strike, an alarmed Air Force intelligence officer in the operations center called over an Air Force lawyer in charge of determining the legality of strikes. The lawyer ordered the F-15E squadron and the drone crew to preserve all video and other evidence, according to documents obtained by The Times. He went upstairs and reported the strike to his chain of command, saying it was a possible violation of the law of armed conflict — a war crime — and regulations required a thorough, independent investigation.

But a thorough, independent investigation never happened.

This week, after The New York Times sent its findings to U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the air war in Syria, the command acknowledged the strikes for the first time, saying 80 people were killed but the airstrikes were justified. It said the bombs killed 16 fighters and four civilians. As for the other 60 people killed, the statement said it was not clear that they were civilians, in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms.

“We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them,” Capt. Bill Urban, the chief spokesman for the command, said in the statement. “In this case, we self-reported and investigated the strike according to our own evidence and take full responsibility for the unintended loss of life.”

The only assessment done immediately after the strike was performed by the same ground unit that ordered the strike. It determined that the bombing was lawful because it killed only a small number of civilians while targeting Islamic State fighters in an attempt to protect coalition forces, the command said. Therefore no formal war crime notification, criminal investigation or disciplinary action was warranted, it said, adding that the other deaths were accidental.

But the Air Force lawyer, Lt. Col. Dean W. Korsak, believed he had witnessed possible war crimes and repeatedly pressed his leadership and Air Force criminal investigators to act. When they did not, he alerted the Defense Department’s independent inspector general. Two years after the strike, seeing no evidence that the watchdog agency was taking action, Colonel Korsak emailed the Senate Armed Services Committee, telling its staff that he had top secret material to discuss and adding, “I’m putting myself at great risk of military retaliation for sending this.”

“Senior ranking U.S. military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The Times. Much of the material was classified and would need to be discussed through secure communications, he said. He wrote that a unit had intentionally entered false strike log entries, “clearly seeking to cover up the incidents.” Calling the classified death toll “shockingly high,” he said the military did not follow its own requirements to report and investigate the strike.

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World

Iran threatens ‘harsh response’ after alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria

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Iranian militias warned of a “harsh response” after a number of Syrian and Iranian-backed forces were killed and wounded in an alleged Israeli airstrike near Palmyra in central Syria on Wednesday night, the second such airstrike in the past week.

The Syrian state news agency SANA reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted a communications tower and a number of nearby sites, killing one Syrian soldier and wounding three others. The strike was carried out from the direction of the al-Tanf area near the Jordanian and Iraqi borders with Syria, a Syrian military source told SANA.

Around the time of the airstrike, the airspace above the Golan Heights was closed to flights until Friday at 12:15 a.m.

On Thursday morning, a joint operations room affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hezbollah and the Assad regime warned that it has decided to respond harshly to the airstrikes after a number of operatives were killed and wounded in them, according to Hezbollah-affiliated media. It is unclear if the statement was referring to casualties other than those reported by SANA.

The joint operations room stressed that its mission in Syria is only to help the Syrian state to confront “terrorists” and ISIS.

“For years, we have been subjected to attacks from the Israeli and American enemy in an attempt to drag us into side battles that were not a priority for our presence in Syria, and the Zionists’ excuse was that they were targeting accurate weapons and sensitive equipment that posed a threat to their usurping entity,” added the joint statement.

Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem condemned the alleged Israeli airstrikes on Thursday morning as well, calling them a “blatant aggression and outrageous thuggery.”

Qassem stressed that Israel could only be deterred by confronting it, responding to its attacks, making it “pay the price” for its actions and not allowing it to impose the rules of engagement.

The airstrike comes just a week after an alleged Israeli airstrike on the T-4 airport, also near Palmyra, wounded six Syrian soldiers, according to SANA.

Satellite imagery from Sentinel Hub shared on social media showed damage on the runway at T-4 after the airstrike.

Before last week’s airstrike, the last one blamed on Israel in Syria took place in August, targeting the Qalamoun Mountains near the capital Damascus. Four Syrian civilians were reportedly killed when Syrian air defense missiles fell in a residential area in the town of Qara.



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US

US carries out Kabul airstrike against ISIS-K suicide bomber that threatened airport, US official confirms

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The U.S. military conducted an airstrike against a vehicle carrying at least one suicide bomber who intended to target Kabul’s international airport Sunday, a U.S. official confirmed. 

The strike in a crowded neighborhood northwest of the airport set off “significant secondary explosions,” which indicated a “substantial amount of explosive material” inside the vehicle, Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said in a statement. While the target was initially described as a vehicle-born improvised explosive device (IED), an official clarified that the explosives may have been worn by one or more bombers inside, rather than planted on the vehicle itself.

The U.S. military acted to intervene and prevent another event like the one that occurred Thursday when a suicide bomb killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghan citizens. 

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“U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International Airport,” Urban said. “We are confident we successfully hit the target.”

Urban added that the military is assessing the possibility of civilian casualties.

Smoke rises after an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 29, 2021. (Photo by Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
(Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

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The Associated Press reported that an Afghan police chief claimed the explosion killed at least one child. 

The official’s comments that the strike used “over-the-horizon” capabilities indicated that the military used an unmanned drone from a military base in the Gulf.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a message to journalists that the strike targeted the bomber as he drove a vehicle loaded with explosives. Mujahid offered few other details.

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The attack comes as the United States winds down a historic airlift that saw tens of thousands evacuated from Kabul’s airport, the scene of much of the chaos that engulfed the Afghan capital since the Taliban took over two weeks ago.

U.S. military cargo planes continued their runs into the airport Sunday, ahead of a Tuesday deadline earlier set by President Joe Biden to withdraw all troops from America’s longest war. 

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The drone strike Sunday occurred as families were receiving their fallen sons and daughters at Dover Air Force Base. President Biden, Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived at Dover to meet with the families ahead of the dignified transfer of the fallen. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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US airstrike targets Islamic State member in Afghanistan

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting swiftly on President Joe Biden’s promise to retaliate for the deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport, the U.S. military said it used a drone strike to kill a member of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.

The strike Saturday came amid what the White House called indications that IS planned to strike again as the U.S.-led evacuation from Kabul airport moved into its final days. Biden has set Tuesday as his deadline for completing the exit.

Biden authorized the drone strike and it was ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet publicly announced.

The airstrike was launched from beyond Afghanistan less than 48 hours after the devastating Kabul attack that killed 13 Americans and scores of Afghans with just days left in a final U.S. withdrawal after 20 years of war. U.S. Central Command provided few details; it said it believed its strike killed no civilians.

The speed with which the U.S. military retaliated reflected its close monitoring of IS and years of experience in targeting extremists in remote parts of the world. But it also shows the limits of U.S. power to eliminate extremist threats, which some believe will have more freedom of movement in Afghanistan now that the Taliban is in power.

Central Command said the drone strike was conducted in Nangahar province against an IS member believed to be involved in planning attacks against the United States in Kabul. The strike killed one individual, spokesman Navy Capt. William Urban said.

It wasn’t clear if the targeted individual was involved directly in the Thursday suicide blast outside the gates of the Kabul airport, where crowds of Afghans were desperately trying to get in as part of the ongoing evacuation.

The airstrike came after Biden declared Thursday that perpetrators of the attack would not be able to hide. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said. Pentagon leaders told reporters Friday that they were prepared for whatever retaliatory action the president ordered.

“We have options there right now,” said Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

The president was warned Friday to expect another lethal attack in the closing days of a frantic U.S.-led evacuation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s national security team offered a grim outlook.

“They advised the president and vice president that another terror attack in Kabul is likely, but that they are taking maximum force protection measures at the Kabul airport,” Psaki said, echoing what the Pentagon has been saying since the bombing Thursday at Kabul airport.

Late Friday, the State Department again urged Americans to stay away from airport gates, including “the New Ministry of Interior gate.”

Few new details about the airport attack emerged a day later, but the Pentagon corrected its initial report that there had been suicide bombings at two locations. It said there was just one — at or near the Abbey Gate — followed by gunfire. The initial report of a second bombing at the nearby Baron Hotel proved to be false, said Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; he attributed the mistake to initial confusion.

Based on a preliminary assessment, U.S. officials believe the suicide vest used in the attack, which killed at least 169 Afghans in addition to the 13 Americans, carried about 25 pounds of explosives and was loaded with shrapnel, a U.S. official said Friday. A suicide bomb typically carries five to 10 pounds of explosives, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary assessments of the bombing.

Biden still faces the problem over the longer term of containing an array of potential extremist threats based in Afghanistan, which will be harder with fewer U.S. intelligence assets and no military presence in the nation.

Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst and deputy staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she doubted Biden’s assurances that the United States will be able to monitor and strike terror threats from beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Pentagon also insists this so-called “over the horizon” capability, which includes surveillance and strike aircraft based in the Persian Gulf area, will be effective.

In an Oval Office appearance Friday, Biden again expressed his condolences to victims of the attack. The return home of U.S. military members’ remains in coming days will provide painful and poignant reminders not just of the devastation at the Kabul airport but also of the costly way the war is ending. More than 2,400 U.S. service members died in the war and tens of thousands were injured over the past two decades.

The Marine Corps said 11 of the 13 Americans killed were Marines. One was a Navy sailor and one an Army soldier. Their names have not been released pending notification of their families, a sometimes-lengthy process that Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said involves “difficult conversations.”

Still, sorrowful details of those killed were starting to emerge. One Marine from Wyoming was on his first tour in Afghanistan and his wife is expecting a baby in three weeks; another was a 20-year-old man from Missouri whose father was devastated by the loss. A third, a 20-year-old from Texas, had joined the armed services out of high school.

Biden ordered U.S. flags to half-staff across the country in honor of the 13.

They were the first U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan since February 2020, the month the Trump administration struck an agreement with the Taliban that called for the militant group to halt attacks on Americans in exchange for a U.S. agreement to remove all American troops and contractors by May 2021. Biden announced in April that he would have all forces out by September.

Psaki said the next few days of the mission to evacuate Americans and others, including vulnerable Afghans fleeing Taliban rule, “will be the most dangerous period to date.”

The White House said that as of Friday morning, about 12,500 people were airlifted from Kabul in the last 24 hours on U.S. and coalition aircraft; in the 12 hours that followed, another 4,200 people were evacuated. Psaki said about 300 Americans had departed and the State Department was working with about 500 more who want to leave. The administration has said it intends to push on and complete the airlift despite the terror threats.

Kirby told reporters the U.S. military is monitoring credible, specific Islamic State threats “in real time.”

“We certainly are prepared and would expect future attempts,” Kirby said. He declined to describe details of any additional security measures being taken, including those implemented by the Taliban, around the airport gates and perimeter. He said there were fewer people in and around the gates Friday.

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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Darlene Superville and Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed to this report.

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World

Israeli airstrike targets Syria – report

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Syrian air defenses are responding to an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting a site in the Qalamoun Mountains, northeast of Damascus, Syrian state news agency SANA reported on Thursday night.

According to Lebanese media, the airstrike was carried out over Lebanese airspace. The Israeli airstrike targeted sites near Damascus and Homs and most missiles were intercepted, Syrian military sources told SANA.

The sources also added the airstrike’s results are being checked.

Footage of the airstrike has surfaced on social media.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.



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US

U.S. airstrikes target Iran-backed militias in Syria in Biden’s 1st military action

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The U.S. on Thursday conducted its first military action under President Biden, targeting infrastructure used by Iranian-backed militant groups in Syria in response to recent rocket attacks in Iraq. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters traveling with him that he had recommended the strike to Mr. Biden, who authorized it in a phone call on Thursday morning.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American coalition personnel,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement. Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria for years, most recently in a rocket attack on the northern Iraqi city of Erbil last week that wounded four American contractors and one military service member. 

The strikes destroyed multiple facilities at a border control point in al Bukamal, Syria, used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada, according to Kirby.

The Pentagon spokesman did not mention any casualties, but U.K.-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that 22 people were killed in the strikes, which it said had hit three trucks carrying munitions from Iraq into Syria. 

The organization, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria and generally provides reliable information, said all of those killed were believed to have been members of the Iran-backed militias, the majority of them from Kataib Hezbollah. The Observatory said the death toll was likely to rise as some of the wounded were in serious condition. The group’s sources said that immediately after the strikes, the Iranian-backed groups rushed to evacuate several sites in al Bukamal, fearing further U.S. attacks.

Carefully chosen target

In the first military strike of his presidency, Mr. Biden approved a target along the Syria-Iraq border that would serve as payback for Iran putting U.S. personnel in harm’s way — but stop short of further escalating tension with Tehran as he tries to draw the Islamic Republic back into the crumbling 2015 nuclear deal. 


Iran restricting U.N. nuclear inspectors

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An administration official confirmed that the Biden team had selected the targets as part of a calibrated response meant to meant to achieve three things: Send a signal to Iran that the new U.S. president would not tolerate rocket attacks that put U.S. personnel in harm’s way; avoid angering U.S. partners in Iraq who need to keep good relations with both Tehran and Washington, and avoid provoking Iran to retaliate further.

Two former Trump administration officials told CBS News that the al Bukamal area has been a target of scores of Israeli strikes in recent months because it is serves as a transhipment point for the Iranian-backed Shiite militias in both Syria and Iraq. Both officials approvingly acknowledged the selection of the location. 

One of the former officials said, “it is easier to send messages there as we’re less exposed.”


Sullivan: Biden ready for Iran talks, vows re…

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The Biden administration’s strike against Iranian-backed militias follows on the heels of its first diplomatic outreach to Iran regarding American hostages in the country, as well as its public offer made via European diplomats to restart talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. Both of those diplomatic initiatives were made last week.

Last week, a rocket attack in Erbil, northern Iraq, killed one contractor, who was not an American citizen, and injured four American contractors and one American service member. A total of eight contractors were injured, two seriously enough to require evacuation. 


Shining a light on Syria’s civil war

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The United States had evidence that the attack was conducted with Iranian-supplied equipment. The attack on Erbil consisted of 14 rockets, with six more left on the launcher rails. 

The most recent airstrike against Iranian-backed militias was in December 2019, which hit targets in both Iraq and Syria. There was no immediate response from Iranian officials to Thursday’s U.S. strike. 

Eleanor Watson and Tucker Reals contributed reporting.

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