Kabul Bombing Survivors Belie US Claim Troops Did Not Fire Into Crowd
18:06 GMT 09.02.2022 (Updated: 15:18 GMT 28.05.2023)
© REUTERS / REUTERS TV / FILE PHOTO: Wounded taken to hospital after attack on Kabul airport
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Pentagon spokesman Captain Bill Urban tried to claim the Afghans, who were shot in the minutes after the suicide bomber detonated, were in fact deluded by the 'concussive' effects of the blast on their brains.
Survivors of the 2021 Kabul airport bombing have contradicted Pentagon denials that US troops fired into the crowd, killing and injuring survivors.
At least 183 people were killed in the August 26 suicide bombing by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP)* outside the heavily fortified international airport.
Thousands of people had crowded around the Abbey Gate entrance through the concrete barriers erected by occupation troops, desperately seeking to be allowed onto Western military flights.
The chaos was prompted by US President Joe Biden's order for a panicked evacuation of Washington's embassy and all its citizens in the country, as the Taliban* rapidly retook power after 20 years of Western occupation.
Many of the victims were standing literally knee-deep in human waste as they crowded into an open sewage canal when the bomber detonated his explosive belt. The filthy water was instantly transformed into a pool of human blood and torn flesh.
🇺🇸🇦🇫The Pentagon released findings of its probe of the Kabul airport suicide bombing in August that killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US service members.
— The RAGE X (@theragex) February 4, 2022
❌ body cam clips of the explosion: pic.twitter.com/1ISEGkit7e
The dead included 13 US service people, two Afghan-born British citizens and the child of a third. Biden vowed revenge the following day, only for a US Air Force drone raid to kill ten civilians from one family, including seven children.
The survivors' testimony exposes last Friday's US Department of Defence report on the massacre as a whitewash.
The Pentagon denied widespread witness accounts and medical reports from hospitals in the Afghan capital that US troops fired into the crowd and killed bystanders, but said British paratroopers began shooting in the air in a bid to drive the remaining crowds away.
The report even claimed the Taliban, some of whose men were injured reportedly in the attack while attempting to maintain security during the chaotic evacuation, knew of their enemy Daesh's plan beforehand.
Video: Casualties from bombing attacks at the Kabul airport have been transferred to Emergency Hospital. Reuters quoted a Taliban official saying at least 13 people have been killed. The US Pentagon is reporting at least 2 blasts, one near Abbey Gate & the other near Baron Hotel. pic.twitter.com/vgs7pudEcA
— TOLOnews (@TOLOnews) August 26, 2021
But some of the 70 survivors who spoke to journalists from the US CNN news network had a different story to tell. 19 of them were either shot or saw US troops shooting at others.
Targeted Shootings
One of the interviewees, 16-year old Nazir, was at the airport with his brother, sister-in-law and their children.
"There was no shooting in the air. They were targeting people. It was intentional," Nazir said. "In front of me, people were getting shot at and falling down."
Shogofa Hamidi was among the crowd with her sister Morsal when the bomb detonated. She was close enough to the blast that papers shew was holding were charred. Blood and human flesh from the dead victims all around her were splattered across her face and in her mouth.
She saw US troops run out to rescue their own injured and then other opened fire on the injured Afghan civilians.
“I saw people who were injured in the explosion trying to get up, but they fired on them,” Shogofa said.
Shogofa felt someone tugging at her head and turned to see her sister Morsal bleeding from a gunshot wound through her mouth, leaving her unable to speak. "There was so much blood coming out of her face, like a faucet running full of blood," she said.
Morsal said she had been injured in the shoulder by a fragment from the bomb, but could still stand. She also saw soldiers firing at anyone still standing after the explosion. One bullet hit her in the jaw and exited through her neck, which a discharge report from the Italian-run Emergency Surgical Centre in Kabul confirms.
4 February 2022, 19:28 GMT
'Ahmad', a witness who did not want to be identified by his real name, was stunned by the blast but came round and leapt into the sewage canal for cover. There he found his cousin Mohammad, injured but still conscious. While he aided other relatives, Ahmad saw Mohammed shot in the forehead, killing him instantly.
An Afghan Ministry of Defence report confirmed Mohammad had died of a gunshot wound.
Noorullah Zakhel and his cousin Suhail were among those standing in the filthy canal when the bomb went off. He told his cousin: "Run", but then heard shooting as he climbed the bank and threw himself down among the corpses littering the ground.
Seeing those who tried to flee shot down, Noorullah told a family taking cover near him: "Please don’t run, they will shoot you."
He saw soldiers in front of him shooting without warning. "They said nothing -- they just shot people."
Pentagon Denials
A Pentagon spokesman claimed the bullet wounds suffered by the eyewitnesses and their relatives were just figments of their imaginations caused by concussion from the blast.
"The testimony you describe is not inconsistent with the recollections of people with jumbled memories from a concussive event who witnessed trauma and are doing their best to piece together what their brain is unlikely to remember clearly," said US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Captain Bill Urban. "The testimony of people being shot is not, however, supported by any of the other facts as we know them."
Pentagon investigator Colonel C J Douglas admitted on Friday that US marines fired at two "military-aged males" after the bombing, alleging that British soldiers did also but did not hit them.
Marines "fired four warning shots over the head of an individual who displayed concerning behavior and appeared to be observing the casualty site," in one incident, Douglas said. "This individual of interest ultimately fled unharmed."
*The Islamic State Khorasan Province/ISIS-K/Daesh-K is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other countries.
*The Taliban is an organisation under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.
