Joe Biden warns Kabul airport attackers: 'We will hunt you down and make you pay'
The president has said the withdrawal from Afghanistan was meant to prevent US deaths, but Thursday's US casualties are the first in action in the country for 18 months.
Friday 27 August 2021 01:02, UK
Joe Biden has warned those behind the attacks at Kabul's airport on Thursday: "We will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay."
The US president was speaking after it emerged that 13 US service personnel - most of them Marines - were among the 72 people killed after two blasts and a gunfight outside Kabul's airport.
Some 143 people, including 15 US personnel, were injured in the attack, which came 12 days into an effort to evacuate thousands of people - foreign citizens and Afghans - from Kabul.
The US and its allies have until the end of August to get out of Afghanistan.
Mr Biden said the Americans who were killed in the attacks were "heroes" who were "engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others".
The UK's Ministry of Defence has confirmed there were no fatalities among British military personnel or government workers.
Speaking from the White House on Thursday evening, Mr Biden said he had asked for plans to strike back at Isis-K, the Islamic State affiliate believed to have been responsible for the attacks.
He said: "We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place of our choosing.
"These ISIS terrorists will not win. We will rescue the Americans; we will get our Afghan allies out, and our mission will go on. America will not be intimidated."
Mr Biden also said more troops will be sent in if necessary, adding: "Whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it."
The attacks have increased the pressure on Mr Biden, who had justified the withdrawal as a means of preventing American deaths in what he described as Afghanistan's civil war.
On 20 August, days after the Taliban took Kabul, Mr Biden told reporters that remaining in Afghanistan any longer could mean he would need to "send your sons, your daughters - like my son was sent to Iraq - to maybe die. And for what? For what?"
But instead of preventing bloodshed, the chaotic evacuation has now resulted in the first US deaths in action in Afghanistan in 18 months.
On Thursday evening, Mr Biden again stood by his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, saying: "It was time to end this 20-year war."
The deadline for withdrawal agreed between the Taliban and Donald Trump during his presidency last year had been May, but Mr Biden pushed this back to the end of August.
Some European leaders had called for the date to be moved back further but the Taliban warned earlier in the week that such a move would be seen by them as crossing "a red line" and would "provoke a reaction".
The US and UK were continuing evacuation efforts on Thursday evening, while a number of other allies, including Canada and Germany announced their missions were over.
US General Frank McKenzie told a Pentagon news conference that about 5,000 evacuees were on the airfield awaiting flights and that as many as 1,000 Americans and many more Afghans were still trying to leave Kabul.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that the UK had evacuated more than 13,000 people from Afghanistan and operations would continue.