Taken together, the interviews and documents offer the most definitive account to date of the largest noncombatant evacuation in American history.
The news organizations also reviewed 2,000 pages of materials from an internal military investigation obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, including after-action reports, official timelines and redacted transcripts of interviews with more than 130 military personnel.
officials involved in Operation Allies Refuge, the evacuation mission carried out to close the Afghanistan War. ProPublica and Alive in Afghanistan, or AiA, interviewed scores of American troops, Afghan civilians, medical professionals and senior U.S. It was one of the most destructive suicide bombings on record and the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan in the past 10 years of the war. The blast killed 13 American service members, and estimates put the civilian death toll at more than 160. Credit:ĭefense Visual Information Distribution Service The moment of the blast outside the Abbey Gate entrance to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. Slipping through the crowd, Logari had rigged himself with roughly 20 pounds of military-grade explosives.Īt 5:36 p.m., Logari stepped toward the Marines and blew himself up, unleashing a lethal torrent of ball bearings and shrapnel that ripped into the civilians and troops standing around him. Neither Smith nor Shabir noticed Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an engineering student turned Islamic State militant, who had escaped from a prison on an American airbase just days before. And every few hours, the Marines seemed to get a new warning of an imminent terrorist attack. Smith’s lieutenant had told him the Taliban would execute Afghans left behind. The threat of violence loomed everywhere, for everyone.
He scanned the crowd intently, looking for documents and lifting out those who appeared to have the right records. The air was thick with the smell of feces and sweat. As Smith looked over the masses below, he could feel the heat rising from their bodies. Noah Smith, a lanky 20-year-old from Wisconsin wearing dark-rimmed spectacles and camouflage. On the ditch wall above Shabir stood Lance Cpl.
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