The suicide bombing killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members in the course of the messy US withdrawal in August 2021.

The US navy has introduced it’ll conduct interviews with service members in regards to the occasions main as much as a lethal suicide bombing close to Kabul’s airport in August 2021, when the nation was withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan.

On Friday, the Pentagon’s Central Command mentioned that it might interview about two dozen individuals in regards to the explosion that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members. However it emphasised it might not reopen its investigation into the bombing.

“The aim of those interviews is to make sure we do our due diligence with the brand new info that has come to gentle, that the related voices are totally heard and that we take these accounts and study them severely and totally so the information are laid naked,” Central Command spokesperson Michael Lawhorn mentioned in a press release.

The bombing created widespread bloodshed in the course of the closing days of the US withdrawal, which marked the tip of its long-running warfare in Afghanistan.

Crowds of Afghans had gathered at Hamid Karzai Worldwide Airport in Kabul in an effort to go away the nation, after the Taliban overthrew the US-backed authorities and captured town.

However on the afternoon of August 26, 2021, as civilians thronged across the airport’s Abbey Gate, a suicide bomber is believed to have detonated a belt containing explosives.

The bombing — and the navy’s response to it — has heightened criticism that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic and haphazard. Questions have additionally arisen about whether or not the US might have completed extra to forestall the bombing.

At the least one former service member injured within the blast has beforehand acknowledged that the navy by no means interviewed him in regards to the occasions of that day, and he expressed his perception that the bombing was preventable.

Others have pointed to the US’s botched response to the bombing: A US drone strike in Kabul, a number of days afterwards, additionally killed 10 harmless individuals, together with seven kids.

An investigation by US Central Command concluded in November 2021 that the airport assault “was not preventable on the tactical degree with out degrading the mission to maximise the variety of evacuees”.

Nonetheless, former Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews instructed a Congressional listening to in March that members of the navy had been given an outline of a gaggle of males planning on finishing up an assault however had acquired no response from above.

Greater than two years after the withdrawal, many Afghans looking for refuge from the Taliban stay in limbo, with few choices for escape.

Afghans who assisted the US navy could also be eligible for Particular Immigrant Visas within the US, however the system for processing functions has skilled extreme backlogs. Critics additionally say too few immigration choices exist for Afghans who labored with the US in different methods, a truth that might depart them at risk below Taliban rule.