US military’s additional review into deadly Kabul airport attack concludes troops did not see bomber ahead of attack

An additional review by the US military into the deadly Abbey Gate bombing during the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, which aimed to clear up outstanding questions about the attack, has concluded that service members had not previously seen the suspected bomber ahead of the attack, but believed they had because of conflated intelligence reporting.

An additional review by the US military into the deadly Abbey Gate bombing during the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, which aimed to clear up outstanding questions about the attack, has concluded that service members had not previously seen the suspected bomber ahead of the attack, but believed they had because of conflated intelligence reporting. “Over the past two years, some service members have claimed that they had the bomber in their sights, and they could have prevented the attack,” one of the officials on the supplemental review team told reporters on Friday. “But we now know that is not correct.” The bomber was identified as Abdul Rahman al-Logari, a member of ISIS-K. The terror group identified al-Logari as the bomber hours after the attack, but US officials had not yet publicly confirmed he carried out the attack. Officials also confirmed that al-Logari had been released by the Taliban from a prison near Kabul just days before the attack, which CNN previously reported. The military will hope the new review clears up outstanding questions about the circumstances of the attack, particularly those from family members of the 13 US service members killed, some of whom have questioned the conclusions of the military’s original review, which was presented in 2022. The supplemental review was officially announced by US Central Command in September last year, just days after families of the fallen troops demanded answers on the bombing during an emotional congressional roundtable. The review in part addressed public testimony by Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine Corps sniper who told Congress last year that he saw a man who fit the description of the suicide bomber near Abbey Gate prior to the attack.