Writer, Briefings
A victim of the bombings arriving at the Emergency Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
‘We will not forgive’
Dozens of people, including at least 13 U.S. troops, were killed in attacks by two suicide bombers in the crowds outside Afghanistan’s main airport yesterday, hours after Western governments had warned of an imminent Islamic State attack. Estimates of the toll range from at least 30 to more than 60. Follow live updates here.
The bombs were set off near a crowd of families at the airport gates trying to get onto evacuation flights, as these maps show. See the latest footage from Afghanistan.
Speaking from the White House on Thursday evening, President Biden vowed that the U.S. would retaliate against ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate responsible for the attack, and addressed the attackers directly: “Know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said. Read the full transcript.
Quotable: More than 250,000 Afghans who worked with the U.S. are expected to be left behind. “I kept thinking, after everything I did for the Americans,” said one interpreter, who was eventually evacuated after a global effort, “after all my hard work and risking my life, now this is what happens to my family? They are leaving us to die here.”
Analysis: Both the Islamic State and the Taliban have proved able to adapt, terrorism experts say, evolving into more diffuse organizations that continually seek out new global trouble spots to put their violent extremism into action.
Europe migrant crisis: A standoff that has trapped Afghan asylum seekers on the border between Belarus and Poland is a telling example of the E.U.’s dilemma over migration, especially acute now with the Taliban takeover.