The Pentagon revealed today that last night’s airstrike against ISIS-K didn’t just take out one high level ISIS jihadi, but two, and wounded another.
DC EXAMINER – Two Islamic State targets were killed and another wounded in a U.S. airstrike ordered in response to the deadly suicide bombing outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Saturday.
The counterterrorism strike was carried out against ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack that left 13 U.S. service members dead, in Afghanistan’s Nangahar Province, with Major Gen. Hank Taylor, the deputy director of the Joint Staff For Regional Operations, confirming during a Saturday briefing that two “high-profile ISIS targets were killed and one was wounded.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby added it was “a good thing for the people of Afghanistan and it’s a good thing for our troops” that these men were killed. Kirby said officials would not name the terrorists who were killed in the strike, and the Pentagon declined to say whether these individuals, whom they characterize as “planners and facilitators,” were directly involved in Thursday’s blast.
Officials first announced they believed the strike to have been successful Friday night.
“Initial indications are that we killed the target,” Bill Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said Friday. “We know of no civilian casualties.”
The Islamic State took responsibility for the Thursday explosion, which killed 13 U.S. service members and injured another 18. Some 170 people total were killed in the blast.
Terroristic threat still remains…
Kirby said Saturday that the terror threat in Afghanistan remains and that despite the airstrike’s success, officials aren’t under the assumption that it “gets us into the clear.”
“The threat stream is still active, still dynamic, [and] we’re still laser-focused on that and force protection,” Kirby said, before adding, “We aren’t thinking for a minute that what happened yesterday gets us into clear … but do we believe that we hit valid targets, bad guys who can do bad things and can plan bad missions.”
In related news, the Taliban was not a fan of this airstrike:
JUST IN – Taliban condemns U.S. drone strike against Islamic State militants. "It was a clear attack on Afghan territory," a group's spokesman says.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 28, 2021
Of course, terrorists gonna defend terrorists and condemn the big bad devil that is the US.