The days before the bombing had been defined by a single, overwhelming image: thousands of Afghans pressing against airport walls, passing children over razor wire, wading through sewage canals, all trying to reach the flights that might carry them out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The Taliban had swept into Kabul on 15 August, and the United States had set a 31 August deadline for its final withdrawal. In the intervening two weeks, a massive airlift evacuated more than 120,000 people. But the operation required something extraordinary and dangerous -- U.S. Marines standing face to face with Afghan crowds at the airport gates, checking documents, making split-second decisions about who could pass. Intelligence warnings about an ISIS-K attack had been specific and urgent. Commanders knew the threat was real. But closing the gates meant abandoning the people still trying to get out.

The 13 American service members killed ranged in age from 20 to 31. Eleven were Marines, one was a Navy corpsman, and one was an Army soldier. They had been processing evacuees at Abbey Gate when the blast tore through the crowd. In the immediate aftermath, surviving Marines continued to operate, treating the wounded even as they absorbed what had happened to their own. The Pentagon initially reported that a second explosion had occurred at the nearby Baron Hotel, but later investigations concluded there had been only one blast -- at Abbey Gate. The attack was the first combat deaths of U.S. service members in Afghanistan in over eighteen months, and they came not in an offensive operation but in the act of helping people leave.

The Afghan toll dwarfed the American one. At least 170 civilians were killed in the blast -- some estimates place the figure higher. These were people who had worked as translators for coalition forces, staffed international organizations, held visas permitting them entry to the United States or other Western nations. They were teachers, engineers, parents who believed that proximity to the airport gate was their family's last chance. Many had waited for days in the open, enduring the August heat and the indignity of crowds so dense that movement was barely possible. The bomber walked into this mass of humanity and detonated. The people who died at Abbey Gate were not casualties of a distant battlefield. They were people trying to board an airplane.

The United States struck back within 24 hours. On 27 August, a drone strike in Nangarhar Province killed two ISIS-K operatives identified as attack planners. But the retaliatory strike on 29 August proved catastrophic for a different reason. The U.S. targeted a white Toyota Corolla near the airport, believing it carried explosives bound for another attack. Investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post later revealed that the driver, Zemari Ahmadi, was an aid worker for Nutrition and Education International. The packages military analysts had identified as explosives were likely water containers. The strike killed ten civilians, including seven children -- some of whom held visas for entry to the United States. On 17 September, CENTCOM commander General Kenneth McKenzie acknowledged that the strike had killed only innocent people. The CIA had warned of civilians in the area seconds before impact, but the missile was already in flight.

The investigation into the Abbey Gate bombing continued for years and never produced a fully settled account. In April 2024, CNN obtained GoPro footage from a Marine's helmet camera showing extensive gunfire in the minutes after the explosion -- eleven distinct instances over four minutes -- contradicting Pentagon reports that described minimal post-blast shooting. Eyewitnesses, including American military personnel and an Afghan doctor, corroborated the extent of the gunfire. The Pentagon maintained that all casualties resulted from the suicide blast alone. In April 2023, the Taliban killed the primary plotter behind the attack. In March 2025, Pakistan arrested Mohammad Sharifullah, known as "Jafar," who was charged with providing material support to ISIS-K resulting in death. Abbey Gate became shorthand for the costs of the withdrawal -- not only the lives lost but the questions about whether better planning, different timing, or harder choices could have changed the outcome.