The US military said it believes it has killed a planner for the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS) terror group in a drone strike in the east of the country, the media reported.<\/p>\n
“The US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an IS-K planner,” US Central Command spokesman Bill Urban said in a statement last night.<\/p>\n
“The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties,” the statement added.<\/p>\n
Urban described the drone attack as an “over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation”, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n
Most of IS-K’s several thousand extremists are believed to be in hiding in Nangarhar province.<\/p>\n
The IS-K claimed responsibility for the deadly attack outside Kabul airport on August 26 that may have killed as many as 170 people, including 13 US service members.<\/p>\n
Officials in Washington have warned of heightened terror threats to American troops in the aftermath of what was one of the deadliest attacks in the 20-year US-led invasion in Afghanistan, Xinhua news agency reported.<\/p>\n
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told a news conference yesterday that “specific credible threats” are believed to exist, “and we want to make sure we’re prepared for those” threats.<\/p>\n
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki echoed the concern over those security threats, saying in a press briefing that American officials believe “another terror attack in Kabul is likely”.<\/p>\n
Also yesterday Major General Hank Taylor, deputy director of the Joint Staff For Regional Operations, clarified to reporters that the blast at the Abbey Gate of the Kabul airport involving a sole suicide bomber was the only attack that happened Thursday, correcting earlier reports that a second attack was launched at the adjacent Baron Hotel.<\/p>\n
“I can confirm for you that we do not believe that there was a second explosion at or near the Baron Hotel; that it was one suicide bomber,” Taylor said.<\/p>\n
It was not clear the individual killed in the US airstrike was specifically involved in Thursday’s bombing.<\/p>\n
The US reprisal came after President Joe Biden promised to strike those responsible for the suicide bombing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US military said it believes it has killed a planner for the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS) terror group in a drone strike in the east of the country, the media reported. “The US military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an IS-K planner,” US Central Command spokesman Bill Urban […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10227,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226\/revisions\/10227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}