Marines stationed at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate last year were warned by the CIA about a suicide bomber two days before an explosion ripped through the chaotic evacuation, according to one of the troops wounded in the blast.
Thirteen U.S. service personnel and at least 170 Afghans died on August 26, 2021, when the Islamic State bomber detonated his explosives.
Tristan Hirsch was a U.S. Marine stationed at the gate at the heart of the chaos.
He survived the blast and has since left military life, allowing him the freedom to describe the events leading up to the attack.
He described Taliban executions in the crush of people trying to escape, the presence of a second suicide bombed and claimed Marines had seen he first bomber in the area for two days – but were not allowed to kill him.
‘We knew about him two days prior to the attack,’ Hirsch, 24, told his local newspaper in California, the Chico Enterprise-Record.
‘We knew what he looked like. The CIA let us know; he looked exactly as they’d described him.’
They had been told that a man on a suicide mission, and preparing for heaven, would look different to the tired, hungry hordes who were besieging the airport looking for help to get out. They were on the look out for someone looking freshly showered with a well-trimmed beard.
Tristan Hirsch was wounded in the suicide attack on Kabul airport on August 26 last year. He said troops identified a suspected suicide bomber in the days before the explosion, but were not given permission to engage him
The bomber made use of chaotic conditions at Hamid Karzai International Airport to carry out his attack. 13 US service personnel and at least 170 Afghans died
The attack came during a frantic effort to airlift foreign nationals and Afghan allies out of Kabul after the Taliban had taken control of the Afghan capital
Hirsch left the Marines this year and is now free to give his account of chaos in Kabul. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in the bombing
The CIA did not respond to questions about what information had been passed to troops and whether the bomber had been identified.
Hirsch said he did not see the suspect. But others at the gate watched him for two days. ‘He’d show up and leave,’ he added.
‘A friend of mine who was a sniper racked back his rifle and was ready to kill the guy,’ Hirsch said.
‘We asked for permission and the reply was, “let me get a military judge to see if it’s legal.”‘
Hirsch said permission did not come in time, adding: ‘The battalion commander at the time was very concerned about his job.’
At 5:36pm the bomber detonated his explosives.
A Pentagon investigation later said he likely circumvented Taliban security around the airport before detonated a 20-pound bomb, carried in a backpack or vest. It sprayed 5-millimeter ball bearings into a dense crowd around a US position at the gate.
The Islamic State later identified the attacker as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari, a prisoner who had been freed from a high-security prison after the Taliban overran Kabul.
He was reportedly known to American intelligence, who four years earlier had tipped off Indian authorities that he was planning a suicide attack in New Delhi. He was arrested and handed over the CIA, according to the New York Times.
A handout photo made available by the US Air Force shows flag-draped transfer cases inside aa C-17 Globemaster II prior to a dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US
Among the dead was Hirsch’s friend Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover. A picture of him was displayed during a candle light vigil last year in Salt Lake City
Hirsch’s account differs from the Pentagon investigation. Rather then being carried out by a lone bomber, he said Marines had identified a second bomber, ‘but he didn’t get a chance to detonate. I think the first one that went off killed him.’
It also wounded Hirsch.
‘I remember getting hit by the blast, sitting there and I was looking at it,’ he said.
‘My normal job was a combat engineer. I’d dealt with explosives all the time, blowing open doors, making trenches with explosives and really big amounts of explosives. I remember seeing it and thinking that’s not that bad, that’s not big.
‘But what I failed to realize until 30 seconds went by was there were thousands of ball bearings in that 25-30 pound vest he was wearing.
‘At the time I was pretty confused. One of my friends yelled at me to get cover. I was just kind of standing there — everyone yelled for a corpsman.’
The scale of the attack gradually dawned on him. It left Hirsch with a traumatic brain injury, and claimed the lives of one of his friends.
Today he wears a bracelet bearing the name of his platoon leader Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover.
‘He was a really great guy,’ he said.
Hirsch signed up with the Marines at the age of 20 in 2018. Before being sent to Afghanistan, he spent six months in Saudi Arabia as part of the emergency quick reaction force.
Hirsch joined the Marines at the age of 20 in 2018 but left the service earlier this year
As the Taliban made rapid advances across the country, Hirsch and his unit were first in line to go.
They found chaotic scenes at the airport as they arrived just after the Taliban captured the capital.
‘Our squadron leader would go into the command center while we were waiting and tell us how (the first plane) couldn’t land. There were just too many people on the tarmac,’ Hirsch said. ‘They almost ran out of fuel.’
Their job was to man Abbey Gate inside the airport, maintaining order and helping people get out.
‘Our job was to find somehow certain passports and what’s legitimate and what’s a green card,’ he said.
Taliban fighters flying the group’s white and black flag and carrying American-made rifles parade outside the shuttered US embassy in Kabul last week, marking a year since they re-took control of the country
‘We were given no visual aids, instructions were probably passed through 40 people. At times we had to be the bad guys, to turn people away. And you knew what was going to happen to them.
‘The desperation was the worst. Seeing pure human evil — not even from the Taliban but from actual Afghan nationals that were trying to leave.
‘It was desperation I’ve never heard of or seen. Guys would come up to you and just ask you to kill them because they didn’t want to be captured by the Taliban. They’d rather be killed by an American.’
One boy aged 15 or 16 threw a newborn baby into a canal in what seemed to be an act of desperation.
From their vantage point the Marines could even see Afghans being shot dead.
‘The worst thing I think we had to do was turn people away,’ he said.
‘You turn them away, and you would just hear the execution shots 10 minutes later.
‘You could sometimes see what was going on; there was nothing you could do about it, you’d just have to sit there and watch.’