ISIS-K launches rockets at the US at Kabul airport

Neighbors and relatives of the victims next to the vehicle bombed by a US drone in Kabul on Sunday.WAKIL KOHSAR / AFP

The Afghan branch of the Islamic State (ISIS-K) tried to hit retreating US troops again on Monday. The group has claimed responsibility for launching six Katyusha rockets at Kabul International Airport. Five of them have been intercepted by the antiaircraft defenses that the US has deployed at the airfield, according to a spokesman. There have been no casualties, but the US military faces mounting evidence that its bombing the day before killed a dozen civilians, including several children.

Local media identified the origin of the ISIS projectiles in the Lab-e-Jar area, west of the airport, where the van from which they were fired was parked. The Pajhwok news agency claimed that several rockets landed in different parts of the Afghan capital. The impacts, which did not cause casualties, affected a house and a car, according to images broadcast by local television networks.

The attack, for which ISIS claimed responsibility on one of its usual Twitter channels, follows last Thursday's attack, which caused a hundred deaths, and is the second attempt in as many days to humiliate the United States in the final hours. of its withdrawal. The day before, a military spokesman said that the aviation had bombed a vehicle loaded with explosives that was heading to the airport. The statement claimed to have no record of casualties in the operation, carried out "in self-defense" by a drone sent from outside Afghanistan.

The journalistic investigations on the ground have forced the uniformed Americans to recant.

Up to ten members of the same family, six of them children, were killed in the attack, according to testimonies collected by the CNN and BBC networks.

One of the survivors told the latter that the family has no ties to ISIS and that some of its members even had a US passport and were awaiting instructions for their evacuation.

At dawn, a new military communiqué admitted being "aware of the information of civilian casualties" as a result of its bombing and reiterated the numerous secondary explosions of the vehicle as proof that it was loaded with bombs.

"We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life," he concluded.

More information

• Paris and London bring to the UN the creation of a safe zone in Kabul

Join EL PAÍS now to follow all the news and read without limits

Subscribe here

It is not the only blunder the US faces at the end of its chaotic retreat.

After the initial shock from the attack on Thursday, some survivors have denounced that, amid the confusion after the outbreak, American soldiers fired and caused several of the deaths.

Now the BBC has obtained testimonies in that regard.

The Taliban have not missed the occasion to criticize the US operation, which the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, has described as illegal. "We condemn these attacks because it is illegal to carry out arbitrary attacks in other countries," Mujahid told Chinese CGTN television. In the same interview, he insisted that if there were potential threats, Washington should have notified the new Afghan authorities of its intentions.

Earlier, the group also condemned the bombing that killed two ISIS-K militants in Nangarhar province last Saturday, in retaliation for the attack two days earlier. According to Mujahid, two women and a child were injured. The Taliban have an interest in distancing themselves from the US retaliation against the jihadist group, a rival that labels them "sold out" and can reduce support among their more radical followers.

In fact, gestures are already beginning to be seen that cast doubt on the friendly face that the new Afghan rulers are trying to project.

After her ban on music became known, the UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, Agnès Callamard, has echoed complaints from family and friends about the murder of folk singer Fawad Andarabi at the hands of the Taliban in the village of Andarab, in the northern province of Baghlan.

There are repeated allegations that the folk singer #FawadAndarabi was executed by the Taliban in Kishnabad village of Andarab.

There is mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2011. https://t.co/fQ4HhVuM4D

- Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) August 28, 2021

Follow all the international information on

Facebook

and

Twitter

, or in

our weekly newsletter

.