U.S. military review disputes that Marines had Kabul bomber in sights

Marines who survived a devastating suicide bombing during the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan were mistaken in their belief that they had the attacker in their gun sights hours before the blast, a new military review determined, disputing allegations made before Congress and in the media.

The findings, released Monday after they were shared with the families of 13 service members killed in the August 2021 attack at the edge of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, relied in part on facial recognition technology and interviews with the Marines and with others who were not questioned during a previous investigation conducted soon after the explosion. The new review found that the Marines, while diligently performing their jobs on a sniper team, conflated vetted intelligence reports with unverified “spot reports” made by service members on-site, leading to confusion.