GoPro video shot by a Marine at Kabul airport casts doubt on the official Pentagon investigation into a suicide attack that killed 13 Americans and more than 160 Afghans during the chaotic 2021 evacuation.
Ever since then, the Department of Defense has said that the deaths were caused an ISIS-K suicide bomber acting alone.
But the new video, obtained by CNN, raises fresh questions and suggests that far more gunshots were heard in the aftermath than has been admitted.
A dozen American military personnel described the gunfire and one said the first salvo came from an area of U.S. Marines close to the blast site.
‘It wasn’t onesies and twosies,’ the Marine said. ‘It was a mass volume of gunfire.’
CNN obtained a video shot by a Marine stationed at Hamid Karzai International Airport on the day a suicide bomber killed 13 US personnel and more than 160 Afghans in August, 2021
A local doctor also told the news organization that he pulled bullets from the wounded and that dozens of Afghans died from gunshot wounds.
The Pentagon has dismissed previous claims that some of the victims were killed by gunfire and said troops who reported being fired upon were confused or suffering concussion from the blast.
The attack brought a tragic end to the hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan after a 20-year war.
U.S. troops did their best to protect Hamid Karzai International Airport after the Taliban seized control of the capital in August, 2021, as thousands of foreign nationals and tens of thousands of Afghans tried to flee.
The blast at 5:36 p.m. on August 26 at one of the airport gates was the worst attack on American troops and Afghan nationals in more than a decade.
A suicide bomber with the Islamic State affiliate detonated a backpack filled with ball bearings, creating carnage.
Witnesses reported hearing gunfire after the blast.
The official investigation concluded that American and British forces delivered three near-simultaneous bursts of warning shots that did not hit anyone.
U.S. Central Command later ordered a supplemental review amid reports that the bomber had been identified before the blast and the attack could have been stopped.
The Pentagon released overhead images showing the location of the blast by Abbey Gate, as well as areas where British and American forces opened fire
The worst hit were inside a 50-metre blast zone, close to a sniper tower
Afghans trying to flee the Taliban were crowded into a canal, while a line of Marines held back the rest of the crowd. The worst of the casualties were packed into this area beneath the breeze-block sniper tower at the top of this picture, released on Friday by the DoD
It found that the reports were likely mistaken and agreed that a lone ISIS-K bomber was responsible.
The video footage obtained by CNN complicates things. It contains 11 bursts of shooting after the explosion, accounting for nearly four minutes of gunfire, in contrast to the Pentagon description of three ‘near simultaneous’ episodes.
It shows Marines racing for cover in the aftermath of the blast. At one point they choke on CS gas released from a broken a canister.
One can be heard saying: ‘I got that on film, dude.’
An audio forensic expert, who reviewed the footage for CNN, counted a minimum of 43 shots.
Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick said the two investigations looked into whether the bombing was part of a ‘complex attack’—the name for a blast followed by gunmen opening fire.
‘The Supplemental Review found no new evidence of a complex attack, and uncovered no new assertions of outgoing fire post-blast,’ he said. ‘Consequently, the Supplemental Review found no materialistic impact to the original findings of the Abbey Gate investigation.’
A British spokesman said its troops had fired warning shots above the crowd to prevent a surge.
The attack came during the operation to evacuate foreign nationals and vulnerable Afghans
CNN previously reported interviews with more than a dozen Afghans who said they had seen or heard gunfire.
‘I saw people who were injured in the explosion trying to get up, but they fired on them,’ said Shogofa Hamidi, whose sister Morsal was shot in the face.
Dr. Sayeed Ahmadi, the then director of the Wazir Akhbar Khan hospital in Kabul, said: ‘Explosion injuries come with severe injuries and lots of holes in the bodies.
‘But people who were shot had just one or two holes in the chest or head.’
CNN also spoke to 10 Marines, many of whom described hearing gunshots.
Sgt. Romel Finley, who received a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in the attack, told the Brrks YouTube channel, which interviews Marines: ‘My platoon sergeant running past us, saying “get back on that wall and shoot back at those motherf**kers.” So I was like, we are in a gunfight too.’
Christian Sanchez, another Marine survivor, told the same channel: ‘All I see is flashes. And all I could hear was ringing. Like all hear is ringing and f**king flashes going on.
‘And I start hearing snaps. And I start realizing that that’s a f**king dude shooting at me. And I just started shooting at the dude.’
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