The United States carried out a missile strike on Islamic State militants in Kabul on Sunday, U.S. officials said, as its forces at the capital's airport worked to complete a withdrawal that will end two decades of involvement in Afghanistan.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the strike targeted suspected ISIS-K terrorists, a group that is an enemy of both the West and the Taliban and was responsible for a suicide bomb attack outside the airport gates on Thursday.
A loud blast was heard in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday by AFP journalists, hours after US officials warned of the possibility of a terror attack.
A security official from the recently deposed government told AFP it was a rocket that "initial information shows hit a house".
US military commanders believe that another terror attack like the deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport is "highly likely in the next 24-36 hours," President Joe Biden warned Saturday.
The United States took aim at the ISIS group in Afghanistan on Saturday, killing two high-level targets in a drone strike over the devastating suicide bombing at Kabul airport, as President Joe Biden warned another attack on the frantic airlift was "highly likely".
A series of urgent terror warnings have rattled evacuation efforts overseen by US forces, who have been forced into closer security cooperation with the Taliban to prevent a repeat of Thursday's carnage at one of the facility's main access gates.
Scores of Afghan civilians were killed in the bombing claimed by the regional ISIS-Khorasan group, along with 13 US troops -- several of them just 20 years old, the same length of time as US military operations in Afghanistan.
But Biden said Saturday that his military commanders believed a fresh attack could come "in the next 24-36 hours", calling the situation "extremely dangerous". "I directed them to take every possible measure to prioritize force protection," he said after a briefing from his national security team.