Biden rejects probe that found White House, state resisted military's Afghan exit plan
Feb 11, 2022
Washington [US], February 11 : US President Joe Biden said that he rejects an Army investigative report that found the White House and State Department resisted the Department of Defence's efforts to put together a better plan to evacuate US embassy personnel and Afghan allies weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban.
"I'm rejecting them," Biden said in NBC News interview on Thursday (local time) with respect to the findings of the Army investigation, Sputnik News Agency reported.
He added that there was no good time to get out of Afghanistan and there was no way the United States would be able to unite Afghanistan.
The US Defence Department has rejected the report by CNN, stating that its probe has found no definitive evidence that anyone was killed by gunfire in the Kabul airport attack, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said during a press briefing on Wednesday (local time).
A CNN investigation has questioned the results of an official report claiming that no people were killed by gunfire during the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport in August 2021.
"The investigation we believe was comprehensive. It was credible and it was quite definitive," Kirby said as quoted by Sputnik News Agency. "The investigation found no definitive proof that anyone was ever hit or killed by gunfire, either US or Afghan, and I think I'd leave it at that," he said.
On Friday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander General Kenneth McKenzie said that the Pentagon investigation into the suicide bombing found that 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US soldiers had died of a single blast with no casualties from gunfire.
The commander added that ball bearings from the blast caused injuries that looked like gunshot injured.
CNN said it interviewed 70 witnesses and families of the dead and reviewed medical records, videos and photos, the news agency reported, adding the report which stated that 19 people told the news agency that they saw others being hit by gunfire or were hit in crossfire themselves.
The report also cites forensic blast analysts as saying that a single human-borne explosive could not have led to the injuries and deaths of so many people, while others maintained it was possible.
The bombing occurred on August 26 amid the evacuation of US nationals and at-risk Afghans from Kabul airport.
