New video evidence uncovered by CNN significantly undermines two Pentagon investigations, the latest of which was released last week, into an ISIS-K suicide attack outside Kabul airport, during the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The incident was a gruesome coda to America’s longest war, leaving dead 13 United States military service members and about 170 Afghans who were desperately seeking US help to flee the Taliban takeover of Kabul. For two years, the US military has insisted that the loss of life was latest of which was released last week, into an ISIS-K suicide attack outside Kabul airport, and that troops who reported coming under fire and returning it were likely confused in the chaotic aftermath, some suffering from the effects of blast concussion.
But video captured by a Marine’s GoPro camera that has not been seen publicly in full before shows there was far more gunfire than the Pentagon has ever admitted. A dozen US military personnel, who were on the scene and spoke to CNN anonymously for fear of reprisals, have described the gunfire in detail. One told CNN he heard the first large burst of shooting come from where US Marines were standing, near the blast site. “It wasn’t onesies and twosies,” the Marine said. “It was a mass volume of gunfire.”
An Afghan doctor who spoke to CNN on the record for the first time said he personally pulled bullets from the wounded, and with his hospital staff counted dozens of Afghans who died from gunshot wounds.
Combined, the new evidence challenges the credibility of the two US military investigations and raises serious questions for the Pentagon, which has continued to dismiss mounting evidence that civilians were shot dead
The blast at 5:36 p.m. on August 26, 2021, outside Hamid Karzai International Airport marked the worst casualty incident for Afghan civilians and US troops in Afghanistan in over a decade.
For days, hundreds of desperate Afghans – military aged-men, women, children, and the elderly – had been standing in the blistering heat, hoping to persuade their way into the airport and onto a stream of US cargo planes that flew over a hundred thousand people out to safety.
The scene outside the airport’s Abbey Gate, where crowds were densest, was gruesome even before the blast. Former translators and other Afghans who had assisted the near-20-year NATO presence waded in trash and knee-deep sewage water that filled a concrete drainage canal.
When an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated a backpack device just above the densely populated concrete canal, the evacuation was drastically curtailed.
The Pentagon has insisted all deaths and injuries were caused by the explosive device and the ball bearings it fired into the crowd. Though it has acknowledged there was gunfire from American and British forces, it says that was limited to three bursts that were near-simultaneous – one of 25 to 30 warning shots from UK troops, and two bursts of fire from US troops aimed at suspected militants, which did not hit anyone.
The US Central Command ordered a supplemental review into the incident in September 2023, after criticism of its investigation’s conclusions, particularly around whether the bombing could have been prevented – in harrowing emotional testimony from survivors on social media and to Congressional hearings.
Robert Maher, an audio forensic expert at Montana State University in Bozeman, who reviewed the footage for CNN, found at least 11 episodes of gunfire over a four-minute window, totaling a minimum of 43 shots. He added that the burst near the start contained at least 17 shots, with multiple weapons likely firing and overlapping. He said in two other bursts of fire, the rounds appeared to follow a “crack-boom” sequence – the crack of the bullet breaching the sound barrier recorded before the sound of the gunshot reached the microphone – indicating the bullet traveled over or across the camera.
Sarah Morris, a digital forensics expert from the University of Southampton in England, examined both the audio and video files for evidence of digital corruption, alteration, or manipulation, and found none. She said the location data and metadata of the two clips that lead up to and follow the blast showed they were filmed “very close to each other.”
Separately, Morris used an algorithm to phase out predictable background noise on a GoPro from clothing or motion, and found in 16 instances where there were peaks in audio which she said were “unusual noises that appear consistent with a firearm.” The 16 overlapped with the 11 episodes discerned by Maher.
While some Marines aid wounded Afghans, the video also shows that, 21 minutes and 49 seconds after the bombing, Marines fired a CS gas canister from inside the airport walls towards the area near the blast. It may have landed near injured and dead Afghan civilians, still gathered around the sewage trench that ran along the scene of the blast at that time, according to videos shared on social media.
The Pentagon’s investigations have made no reference to the video, half an hour of which CNN obtained. It is unclear how much of it the Pentagon saw prior to publication of this story. It released four seconds of the video – the moment of the blast itself – as part of its initial investigation in February 2022, although the source of that brief clip remains unclear.
CNN described the full video and findings of this story in significant detail to the Pentagon ahead of publication. A spokesman said the Pentagon would need to see any “new, previously unseen, video out there” before assessing it. Army Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick, public affairs adviser to the supplemental review team, said the latest review supported the Pentagon’s initial findings.
He said in a statement: “The 2021-2022 Abbey Gate Investigation thoroughly investigated the allegations of a complex attack”, which would have involved gunfire from militants after the blast, “as well as allegations of outgoing fire from US and coalition forces following the blast. The Supplemental Review found no new evidence of a complex attack, and uncovered no new assertions of outgoing fire post-blast. Consequently, the Supplemental Review found no materialistic impact to the original findings of the Abbey Gate investigation.”
A spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defense said that its troops fired “warning shots above the crowd to prevent a surge,” none of which were fired at people – the same position it held in 2022.