Exclusive: New evidence challenges the Pentagon’s account of a horrific attack as the US withdrew from Afghanistan

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 caused by a single explosion, 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 Army 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.

Those results, which were released on April 15, reaffirmed that a lone ISIS-K bomber carried out the attack, and found that “new information obtained during the review did not materially impact the findings in the November 2021” investigation, and the review “did not recommend any modifications to those findings.” The review did not pursue numerous reports from Afghan survivors of significant gunfire in the wake of the blast.

The Marine’s GoPro footage runs nearly continuously for many minutes before and after the blast. It shows 11 episodes of shooting after the explosion, over nearly four minutes. This is significantly more than the three “near simultaneous” bursts of gunfire that the Pentagon investigations have claimed occurred.

One sustained burst of about 17 gunshots comes just over 30 seconds after the bomb detonates, according to the video, with the other 10 bursts of two to three rounds each. At no point are Marines seen firing on camera or is anyone visibly hit by gunfire. It is unclear where the gunmen are or what they are firing at.

It shows Marines, some on their first deployment to a warzone, race for cover from gunfire, and choke from CS gas released when the blast tore open a canister on a Marine’s flak jacket.

One Marine, presumably the cameraman, notes after the blast: “I got that on film, dude.” Seconds later, as Afghans seem to race towards the airport walls to seek safety, another voice adds: “They’re breaking through.” The remainder of the footage shows the Marines swiftly getting accountability of their own units, struggling to come to terms with the blast’s impact, and hearing a steady series of controlled, isolated bursts of gunfire close by.

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