Veterans and present duty personnel described seeing moms carrying dead newborns and the Taliban killing and brutally assaulting individuals as they urgently attempted to flee Afghanistan as the US withdrew its soldiers in 2021.
Current service members and veterans have revealed the violence and death they observed during the chaotic US pullout from Afghanistan in graphic detail.
Retired US Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews was among those who spoke before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which was looking into how the withdrawal was handled.
Mr Vargas-Andrews sobbed as he described the bloodiest event of the August 2021 US evacuation: a suicide explosion in Kabul airport that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US servicemen and women.
He described the stench of human flesh beneath a big cloud of smoke, as screams of children, women, and men filled the air around the airport when two suicide bombers targeted crowds of Afghans seeking to flee the country on a plane.
He said that Marines and others assisting in the evacuation were given details of those suspected of organising an attack before it occurred.
Mr Vargas-Andrews, who had his right arm and leg amputated as a result of the blast, claimed he and others saw two guys matching the descriptions and acting suspiciously, and eventually had them in aim, but never received a response regarding whether to take action.
“There was no accountability,” Mr Vargas-Andrews told the committee. “No one was, and no one is still.”
“In my perspective, the pullout was a disaster.”
The pullout marked the end of America’s longest war, a 20-year battle that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Afghans and more than 2,400 Americans.
Millions of Afghans hurried to Kabul airport in August 2021, hoping to flee the new Taliban rule, which had seized control of the capital far faster than US intelligence had predicted.
At the hearing on Wednesday, witnesses said they saw mothers carrying dead newborns and the Taliban killing and viciously assaulting people at the airport. They portrayed the United States’ desperate attempt to save American citizens and Afghan allies, blaming insufficient planning and support.
“I saw the faces of everyone we couldn’t save, everyone we left behind,” said Aidan Gunderson, an Army medic stationed at Abbey Gate, the airport area where the bomb exploded.
“I’m curious whether our Afghan allies fled to safety or were slain by the Taliban.”
Despite the collapse of the Afghan capital, President Biden followed through on Donald Trump’s threat to depart Afghanistan.
Witnesses urged action to assist the many thousands of Afghan allies who worked alongside US troops and are either stuck in the US or returned in Afghanistan.
“Our veterans know something else that this committee would be well to consider: we may be through with Afghanistan, but it is not finished with us,” retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann told the committee.
The Republican-led hearing is the first in a series that will look into the withdrawal.
Lieutenant Colonel Rob Lodewick, a spokesman for the Defense Department, said on Wednesday that the Pentagon’s earlier review of the airport attack yielded no advance identification of a possible attacker, nor any requests for “an escalation to existing rules of engagement” governing the use of force by US troops.
A report released last month by the US inspector-general for Afghanistan, John Sopko, determined that acts done by both the Trump and Biden administrations were critical to the abrupt collapse of the Afghan government and military.
The report condemned all US administrations since American forces entered Afghanistan in 2001 for failing to establish an effective, sustainable Afghan military before withdrawing US troops completely in August 2021.
