Joe Biden travels to airbase to honour US troops killed in Afghanistan
- After arriving at the base in Delaware, Biden and his wife, Jill, met the families of service members killed in the suicide bomb attack in Kabul last week
- Thursday’s attack, which was claimed by the Afghan affiliate of Islamic State, was the most lethal incident for the US military in Afghanistan in a decade
An Islamic State suicide bombing on Thursday killed scores of Afghans and 13 American troops who were guarding Kabul’s airport amid an airlift that has evacuated about 114,400 people in the past two weeks.
American forces launched a military strike in the Afghan capital on Sunday targeting a possible suicide car bomb, US officials said.
“We are in a period of serious danger given what we are seeing in the intelligence,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told CNN’s State of the Union programme in an interview broadcast on Sunday, before the latest strike was reported.
“We are taking every possible measure at the direction of the president to ensure that our forces are protected on the ground even as they complete their mission of bringing in the remaining American citizens and Afghan allies.”