In the “pandemonium” that followed a suicide bombing at Kabul Airport, witnesses have told RT reporter Murad Gazdiev, US troops fired “indiscriminately” into the panicked crowd, with civilians shot in the head and stomach.
The bomb blast ripped through a crowd of people outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, killing more than 150 people, including 13 American troops. In the chaos that followed the explosion, early reports from the ground suggested that American forces opened fire on the panicked crowd of Afghans at the airport gate.
RT reporter Murad Gazdiev heard the gruesome details from eyewitnesses he spoke to, and he described the grisly events on Monday.
“The American troops there at the gate were stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder,” he explained. “The ISIS suicide bomber…managed to get very very close to them, just metres away, and surrounding him was a crowd. People were jam packed together.”
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“Once his suicide vest went off, there was absolute pandemonium. People started running in all directions, including into the airport,” Gazdiev continued. “That is when American troops, according to the witnesses, began firing into the crowds. They began shooting indiscriminately.”
The gate where the bombing took place is hemmed in on two sides by concrete walls, a feature that likely amplified the effects of the blast. According to recent reports, troops at the airport had been told to expect an attack, and Gazdiev said that, in the panicked aftermath, they kept firing into the throng of people, “fearful that there could be more suicide bombers in the crowd.”
“We saw that they were shooting people in the stomach and in the head from all sides, not just into the air,” one witness told RT. “Mostly Americans were shooting.”
“The explosion killed few Afghans because it happened on the side where the Americans were,” another witness explained. “So people died in the crowd, with the shooting from different sides.”
Doctors Gazdiev spoke to described treating victims with wounds from both shrapnel and bullets. One victim was shot in the chest, abdomen, leg and hand, and later died in hospital. At least two others were admitted to hospital with bullet wounds.
“Others had no mark on them, but they were trodden underfoot” as the crowd fled from the scene, Gazdiev reported. Other witnesses described how some civilians were shot after they fell to the ground in the stampede.
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The Pentagon has refused to either confirm or deny the details set out by Gazdiev. Such a policy is standard practice for the US military, whose own investigation into the incident may take more than a year to conclude.
ISIS-K, a regional offshoot of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terror group, claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The scenes that played out at the airport on Thursday, coupled with a US response that saw two allegedly high-ranking ISIS-K members killed in one drone strike and an Afghan family and children wiped out in another, made for a bitter denouement to the US’ 20-year war in Afghanistan. After two weeks of haphazard evacuation, the final US troops and civilian staff are set to leave Kabul on Tuesday, with the Taliban back in power and warning of “consequences” should Tuesday’s deadline not be met.
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