Less than a day after the Pentagon said on Friday night that U.S. forces conducted a drone strike (in which a Reaper drone flew to Afghanistan from a base in the Middle East) in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangahar Province against an ‘ISIS-K planner’ who was plotting ‘future attacks’ on U.S. forces in Kabul, and was killed while driving in a vehicle along with an ‘associate,’ on Sunday morning the Pentagon said will not release names of the 2 ‘high-profile’ ISIS planners (up from one as disclosed originally) killed, but merely described them as “ISIS-K planners and facilitators.”
The Pentagon’s adamant refusal to name the targets of the drone strike is perplexing in light of the Biden admin’s eagerness to give out “kill lists” which reveal the names of American citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban.
“They have lost some capability to plan and conduct missions,” Kirby told reporters on Saturday, though “the threat stream is still active” and the strike doesn’t “get us in the clear.” In other words, the strike has achieved absolutely nothing besides further angering the local ISIS brigade.
The Pentagon also said that there was no coordination or intelligence sharing with Taliban ahead of U.S. drone strike of two ‘high-profile’ planners
Separately, while the Pentagon has refused to release any details surround this operation, several photos emerged on twitter reportedly of the site of the US drone strike in Nangarhar. According to @natsecjeff, it “looks like a house and a three wheeler were hit. The location is in PD-7 of Jalalabad city in Nangarhar province and as per Afghan sources the strike took place last night around 12.”