Asean sees declining trend in new Covid cases and deaths
Southeast Asia saw a decline in new Covid-19 cases and related deaths for the fourth consecutive day on Sunday, collated data showed.
Asean countries reported 79,833 new cases, lower than Saturday’s 85,849, while 1,663 patients died, lower than the previous day’s 1,778.
The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 9.91 million across the region and deaths rose to 220,150.
Vietnam reported 12,796 new cases and 344 deaths on Sunday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 435,265 patients and 10,749 deaths.
China has banned all imports and exports at Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region’s border that it shares with Vietnam since last Thursday to curb the spread of the delta variant of Covid-19. The Chinese authority said that the border will remain closed until the situation improves.
Meanwhile, Myanmar reported 3,098 new cases and 106 deaths, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 392,300 patients and 15,183 deaths.
A spokesman for Myanmar’s military-installed government said on Friday that Covid-19 vaccines would be given to members of the Muslim Rohingya people living in the western state of Rakhine, including the population townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung.
The government also announced that it was trying to vaccinate 50 per cent of the country’s population this year.
After being the country with most number of cases in Asean for many months, Indonesia, with 7,427 new patients, is now behind Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar. However, Indonesia had the most deaths at 551.
U.S. carries out airstrike targeting suspected ISIS-K vehicle in Kabul
“We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material,” said a U.S. Central Command spokesman.
U.S. Central Command said on Sunday that U.S. military forces carried out an airstrike in Kabul against a suspected ISIS-K vehicle, which could pose an imminent threat to the airport.
The airstrike eliminated “an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport,” U.S. Central Command Spokesman Bill Urban said in a statement, referring to a local affiliate of the Islamic State in Afghanistan.
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“We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material,” Urban said.
“We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time. We remain vigilant for potential future threats,” said the spokesman.
The airstrike came after U.S. President Joe Biden warned on Saturday that another terror attack against Kabul airport could be “highly likely in the next 24-36 hours.”
It was the second U.S. military strike in Afghanistan since a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport on Thursday killed 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghans. ISIS-K had claimed responsibility for the attack.
In retaliation for the deadly attack, the U.S. military on Friday launched a drone strike against the terror group in Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan, which killed two “high-profile” members and wounded another, according to the Pentagon.
The United States has been scrambling to evacuate Americans and its Afghan partners from the country since the Taliban entered Kabul on Aug. 15. The White House said on Saturday that around 111,900 people had left Afghanistan since Aug. 14.
Update: 6 Afghans killed after rocket falls into residential area in Kabul
A rocket struck a house in a populated residential area, west of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, killing two adults and four children.
Six Afghan civilians, including four children, were killed after a rocket was fired at the Kabul airport where the U.S.-led evacuation flights were continuing but failed to hit the target, a local source confirmed.
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“The rocket struck a house in Khwaja Bughra, a populated residential area in Police District 15, killing two adults and four children,” Hajji Karim, a representative of the neighborhood in the municipality district, told reporters at the site.
The incident occurred roughly at 4:55 p.m. local time in the area, west of the Hamid Karzai International Airport.
On Thursday, a deadly suicide bomb blast and gun firing claimed by ISIS-K, a local affiliate of the Islamic State group, killed 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at an eastern gate of the Kabul airport and injured nearly 200 others.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban officials and public health authorities have not commented on the blast so far.
The attack came after a U.S. drone was hovering over the city, witnesses said.
Dozens of planes, including military planes, took off from the airport during the day. All U.S. and coalition forces are expected to leave the country on Aug. 31, a planned deadline.
How climate change helped make Hurricane Ida one of Louisiana worst
From its birth, the storm was destined to become a monster. It formed from air that was hot, moist and thick with clouds. It incubated in the sultry Gulf of Mexico, drawing power from water that was unusually warm.
By the time Hurricane Ida made landfall in Port Fourchon, La., on Sunday, it was the poster child for a climate change-driven disaster. The fast-growing, ferocious storm brought 150-mile-per-hour wind, torrential rain and several feet of storm surge to the most vulnerable part of the U.S. coast. It rivals the most powerful storm ever to strike the state.
“People there are going to get blasted,” said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the physics of hurricanes and their connection to the climate. “This is exactly the kind of thing we’re going to have to get used to as the planet warms.”
Hurricane Ida is the latest storm to batter the United States this summer. Tropical Storm Henri weakened as it inundated coastal communities in New England earlier this month, but it still knocked out power to more than 120,000 homes in three states and dumped a record 1.89 inches of rain on New York City in just one hour.
And hurricane season is far from over, as five other tropical systems are now sweeping over the Atlantic Ocean.
Scientists had been bracing for the worst since the moment forecasters identified a tropical depression forming last week. The Gulf of Mexico in August is always a hotbed of hurricane formation. “This time of year, it’s like bathtub water,” said Brian Tang, an atmospheric scientist at the University at Albany in New York.
Lately, conditions in the ocean have been exceptionally bad. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, parts of the Gulf are three to five degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average for the end of the 20th century. Research shows that human greenhouse gas emissions have caused the ocean to warm faster in recent years than at any point since the end of the last ice age.
All this warm water is to hurricanes what gasoline is to a car engine, Tang said. A powerful storm takes energy from the ocean and converts it into roiling clouds and roaring winds.
As Ida developed, it traveled over the hottest parts of the gulf, sucking up energy to fuel its rapid growth. With no shifting upper atmosphere winds to disrupt it, the ring of thunderstorms around the hurricane’s center – called the eyewall – started to churn faster and faster.
Even worse, the sea surface temperature rose as the hurricane got closer to the coast.
“That’s really like stepping on the accelerator,” Tang said. “Flooring it, basically.”
Barely 24 hours after it was identified as an unnamed tropical depression in the Caribbean on Thursday, its wind speeds reached 75 miles per hour – enough for the storm to be upgraded to a hurricane. By Saturday night, winds were hitting 105 miles per hour, making Ida a Category 2 storm.
Kimberly Wood, an atmospheric scientist at Mississippi State University, went to bed with a sinking feeling in her gut.
She woke Sunday to reports from the National Hurricane Center that peak winds were at 150 miles per hour. She thought of all the people who would not have time to evacuate in response to the sudden escalation.
She looked again at satellite images showing what scientists call a “well-organized” storm.
Wood wishes that the scientific terminology didn’t sound so much like a compliment. “It sounds like we’re cheering it on, but we’re not,” she said. “I feel sick to my stomach.”
Emanuel of MIT calls such rapid intensification a “canary in the mine” for climate change. Warmer conditions raise the “potential intensity” for storms – in other words, how bad they can get if nothing disrupts them. Climate change has also widened the disparity between the amount of heat in the ocean and the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold, which accelerates the process of evaporation and energy transfer.
“Things happen faster,” he said. “It’s getting to a larger velocity and it’s taking less time to get there.”
In a 2017 paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Emanuel found that once-in-a-century intensification events – in which wind speeds accelerate about 70 miles per hour in just 24 hours – could happen every five to 10 years by 2100. Human-caused warming could lead to never-before-seen escalation of hurricanes, causing unheard-of surge in wind speeds of 100 miles per hour or more.
Climate change not only sets the stage for bigger, fiercer, faster storms, it also makes the deadliest aspect of hurricanes – a deluge of water – even more intense.
For each degree Celsius that air heats up, it is able to hold 7 percent more moisture. This leads to exponentially heavier precipitation during storms.
Rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston in 2017, was made at least 15 percent worse by human-caused warming. Emanuel has found that events like it could become six times more frequent by the end of the century.
“It’s hard to say for any one thing, ‘Yes, for sure this is climate change,’ ” Wood said. “But the warmer waters and the amount of moisture in the air, this in general is going to increase as the climate warms.”
Torrential rain can worsen the effects of hurricanes even when the wind isn’t very strong. Wood noted that Hurricane Henri had deteriorated to a tropical storm by the time it made landfall in Rhode Island, but its torrential rain triggered widespread flooding.
In a small stroke of luck for residents of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, Hurricane Ida is not expected to slow down significantly as it moves across the land – a behavior that made rainfall from Harvey and Henri especially extreme. But meteorologists still have forecast as much as 20 inches of rain for areas in Ida’s path.
Rising sea levels linked to global warming will also exacerbate the storm’s effect. Few places in the United States have suffered more from rising waters as Louisiana, where seas in some areas are 24 inches above their 1950 levels. This is partly because of development that has eroded the coastline and caused land to sink. But it is made worse by faraway melting glaciers, and the fact that ocean water expands as it warms.
The higher the baseline sea level, the more water will be pushed on shore by wind during hurricanes.
Wood urged residents not to underestimate the potential power of all this water. Just six inches of moving water can knock a healthy adult to the ground. Two feet is enough to float a car, sweeping away the vehicle and anyone inside it.
A 2014 study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society found that 76 percent of fatalities from hurricanes between 1963 and 2012 were caused by storm surge or flooding.
“Those who are hunkering down on the coast are going to be pretty battered from this,” Wood said.
In an era when climate change has raised the bar for how bad hurricanes can become, Emanuel said, Hurricane Ida is a hint of what can happen when a storm reaches its “full potential.”
Energized by hot water, unobstructed by landforms or disruptive wind, Ida surged ashore Sunday with overwhelming force. Towering waves have ripped boats from their moorings and threatened to sweep people out to sea. Trees toppled and roofs went flying amid brutal blasts of wind.
With conditions too dangerous to attempt rescue operations, officials pleaded with people in flooded areas to stay in their homes and wait for the storm to pass.
This monster could not be battled or outrun. As night fell on Louisiana and Ida plowed inland, all people could do was endure.
Ida makes landfall as Category 4 near Port Fourchon, Louisiana
On the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrinas assault on New Orleans, Category 4 Ida slammed into the southeast Louisiana coastline after rapidly gaining strength Saturday night. The powerhouse storm, packing winds of 150 mph, is forecast to wallop New Orleans with hurricane-force winds and over a foot of rain Sunday afternoon and evening.
Near where Ida comes ashore, the National Hurricane Center is predicting “potentially catastrophic” wind damage and an “extremely life-threatening” ocean surge. Devastating effects from destructive winds and flooding rain could extend more than a hundred miles inland.
Hours before landfall, NOAA and Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew into Hurricane Ida, data helped the National Hurricane Center determine that Ida’s hurricane-force winds extended up to 50 miles from the center, with tropical-storm-force winds up to 150 miles away.
Ida made landfall at 12:55 p.m. and is moving northwest at about 13 mph. The hurricane is projected to turn north by Monday morning as it loses strength over land but produces extremely heavy rainfall.
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Tracking by PowerOutage.us showed that nearly 315,000 customers in Louisiana had lost power, with about 100,000 losing service in just the past hour. The outages were concentrated in the southeastern part of the state, near where Ida made landfall.
Sustained winds of 40 mph, gusting to 59, have been reported at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
In the areas hit hardest by outages, a majority of customers were without power. Plaquemines Parish was worst, with the power out for nearly 85% of tracked customers, followed by Terrebonne Parish, where 76% were without power.
Grand Isle, La., located immediately to the east of where Ida’s eye came ashore, has been hammered by the storm’s most intense winds and an unforgiving ocean surge.
A Davis weather station clocked a wind gust of 146 mph; this is not an official reading but is plausible considering the intensity of the storm and Grand Isle’s location. The Grand Isle police chief told the Weather Channel he clocked a 148-mph gust.
A weather station at Southwest Pass, La., located in the most southeastern part of the state, recorded a gust of 128 mph earlier Sunday.
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, said Sunday that he worried Hurricane Ida could worsen the already dire coronavirus situation in Southern states.
“You’re having two potential or real catastrophes conflating on each other,” Fauci said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Fauci described the coronavirus situation in Louisiana as “bad enough,” though he said Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) was “doing a very good job in trying to keep things under control.”
Coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in Louisiana hit their highest levels of the pandemic this month, with the state becoming an epicenter amid the surge fueled by the delta variant. Average new daily cases are declining after exceeding 5,000 the week of Aug. 12, but they remain above 4,000, according to Washington Post tracking.
Hospitals remain strained, with a seven-day average of nearly 2,500 inpatients. Edwards told the Associated Press that officials would consider evacuating hospitals in affected areas under normal circumstances. But doing so “isn’t possible” with beds full of covid patients, he said, noting: “We don’t have any place to bring those patients.”
Fauci said the hurricane threatened to make a bad situation worse.
“We’re having a situation where, even when you’re stressed to the limit, to superimpose upon it what will likely be a historic weather, environmental catastrophe is going to do nothing but make things much, much worse,” he said.
In Gulfport, Mississippians woke up to tornado warnings in Hancock County and rain bands moving across the Gulf Coast on Sunday morning. Highway 90 was quickly inundated by a storm surge, and some neighborhoods are dealing with water in low-lying areas, but most are faring well as Hurricane Ida comes ashore in Louisiana.
Harrison County, which includes the cities of Biloxi and Gulfport, initiated a curfew at 8 a.m. Sunday until further notice. Hancock County’s curfew begins at 6 p.m. Sunday and ends at 6 a.m. Monday. Six shelters are open in Harrison County, including two that accept pets, and emergency personnel are in place should high-water rescues become necessary. About 150-200 people are in Harrison County shelters.
So far, things are going smoothly, Harrison County Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said Sunday afternoon. He credited the curfews, along with the closure of local casinos, with keeping people off the roads, but he cautioned that while all seems calm right now, flooding will remain a concern, even as the storm moves northward.
“The storm is not over yet,” Sullivan said. “We don’t know what the back side of this storm is going to bring, so we have to be prepared for the next phase. You can’t let your guard down. There may be river flooding and street flooding, so we don’t want people going out.”
Area residents are accustomed to storms and are generally prepared to take care of themselves and one another, he said.
“I tell people all the time that we have a PhD in storm prep because of Katrina,” Sullivan said. “Most of the people that live on the [Mississippi] coast know what to do and when to evacuate. A lot of times we don’t have to say anything to them, because they’re way ahead of us. They’re smart, they’ve been through this before. They know how to take care of themselves, and we take care of one another.”
New Orleans officials said Sunday that they are confident their levee system will not fail as it did in Hurricane Katrina, allowing water to surge into the city. Their main worry: torrential rains.
The area is projected to get 15 to 20 inches of rain from Saturday into Sunday, authorities said at a midday news conference held just before Hurricane Ida made landfall. The downpour could exceed three inches per hour, overwhelming the city’s drainage systems and causing flooding.
Leaders warned that the hurricane would cut people off from some city services. The police department is working at “100 percent,” Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said, but at some point, it would “have to hunker down.”
“Our health-care system, our hospitals are hunkering down,” echoed Jennifer Avegno, head of the New Orleans Health Department. “They are caring for the patients that are within their walls. Our first responders will be unable to get to you. Please do not try to access a health-care or a hospital facility right now. We will be there for you when the storm passes, but the safest thing you can do is to stay put.”
Authorities urged people to conserve water and said they should stay inside until told otherwise.
“You have everything that you need,” said New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D). “We will get through this, together.”
Jefferson County Parish spokeswoman Gretchen Hirt Gendron said Sunday that the Grand Isle mayor believes about 40 people remained on the island town just off the coast of Louisiana and about 50 miles south of New Orleans. Some are residents; others are first responders staying in a fortified building so that they can respond as soon as it is safe, she said.
Surveillance footage from a parish council member captured tables and benches surrounded by water; other clips showed rushing rapids and trees flailing in the wind, also swamped.
Council member Scott Walker tweeted Sunday morning that the situation was “escalating quickly,” with gusts well over 100 mph. By midday, he shared news that a Grand Isle wind-measurement device “broke” at 148 miles per hour and said wind data had been “down for a while.”
Military carries out strike in Kabul as slain service members are returned to U.S.
President Joe Biden paid his respects to the U.S. service members slain in Kabul as their remains were transported off a military aircraft at Dover Air Force Base Sunday, hours after the nation carried out a second strike against an Islamic State target in Afghanistan.
The president spoke to the relatives of the troops, who were killed in last week’s airport bombing, and participated in a “dignified transfer” – in which the remains of fallen service members are returned to the U.S. in flag-draped cases.
Thirteen U.S. troops were killed in the attack, many too young to remember a time before the war.
Earlier, the U.S. carried out a strike on a vehicle in Kabul in response to an “imminent” threat to the airport in the Afghan capital, an official said.
A U.S. military official said there were “significant secondary explosions” following the Sunday strike, indicating the presence of a “substantial amount of explosive material.”
“We are confident we hit the target we were aiming for; initial reports indicate there were no civilian casualties caused by our airstrike,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the strike.
The strike takes place as U.S. evacuation efforts are winding down with America’s longest war coming to a violent end.
The Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, the Afghanistan and Pakistan arm of the militant group, asserted responsibility for the airport attack on Thursday.
In a joint statement with nearly 100 other countries, the United States said Sunday that it had received reassurances the Taliban would permit Afghans to leave the country after the U.S. withdrawal and that Washington, along with others, would continue to take in Afghans.
“We are all committed to ensuring that our citizens, nationals and residents, employees, Afghans who have worked with us and those who are at risk can continue to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan,” said the statement, whose signatories included the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, though notably not China and Russia.
“We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country,” the statement continued. “We will continue issuing travel documentation to designated Afghans, and we have the clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban that they can travel to our respective countries. We note the public statements of the Taliban confirming this understanding.”
The statement provided no further details regarding the agreement or what, if any, action would be taken if the Taliban reneges.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that it was “not likely” that Washington would backtrack on its agreement to withdraw U.S. forces by Aug. 31, comments in sync with previous statements by the Biden administration.
Blinken also continued to reject criticism that the administration was caught unprepared for the Taliban’s swift return to power and the subsequent need to protect Afghans who worked with the United States during its two decades in the country, and to aid Afghans who oppose the extremist group.
“Our commitment to continue to help people leave Afghanistan who want to leave and who are not out by September 1st, that endures,” Blinken said. “There’s no deadline on that effort. And we have ways, we have mechanisms, to help facilitate the ongoing departure of people from Afghanistan if they choose to leave.”
Blinken told ABC News on Sunday that the risk of further attacks around the Kabul airport remained very high, a situation that has effectively halted most evacuation efforts.
The United States’ top diplomat said there were about 300 U.S. citizens who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.
Blinken denied the United States has given a “kill list” of American citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban, pushing back on such allegations as “simply wrong.”
“The idea that we’ve done anything to put at further risk those that we’re trying to help leave the country is simply wrong. And the idea that we shared lists of Americans or others with the Taliban is simply wrong,” Blinken said on “Meet the Press.”
Elaborating, Blinken said they had in limited situations shared some names with the Taliban, which is controlling security in a loose perimeter outside Kabul airport, to assure those people could be brought into the airport. That had happened particularly in cases where people did not have the necessary credentials or documents on them, he added.
“In specific instances when you’re trying to get a bus or a group of people through, and you need to show a manifest to do that … you’ll share names on a list of people on the bus so they can be assured that those are people that we’re looking to bring in,” Blinken said. “And by definition, that’s exactly what’s happened.”
Blinken’s comments came following outrage from Republicans lawmakers, conservative commentators and others after Politico reported that the United States had provided the Taliban with the names of American citizens, green-card holders and Afghan allies to ensure their exit from Afghanistan. The report led to accusations that the United States had put these Afghans in danger if they were left behind after the United States left the country.
National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne later told Politico that only “in limited cases” the United States has “shared information with the Taliban that has successfully facilitated evacuations from Kabul.”
Blinken emphasized Sunday that the United States has promised nothing to the Taliban and that “there are very significant expectations of the Taliban going forward if they’re going to have any kind of relationship with the rest of the world.” However, Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have scoffed at the idea that the U.S. has any leverage over the Taliban.
“They’re not particularly concerned about international pressure,” McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.” “These are barbarians who certainly are not motivated by what others may think of them, and they’ve got the neighboring countries that have actually been sympathetic to them.”
Fauci open to covid-19 booster shots sooner than eight months
Anthony Fauci said the door is open to administering booster shots in the U.S. sooner than eight months after a completed covid-19 vaccination, a possibility President Joe Biden has raised.
“We’re still planning on eight months. That was the calculation we made,” Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. However, “we’re totally open to any variation in that based on the data,” he added.
Fauci also said he favors requiring shots for schoolchildren as “a good idea” for the U.S., where only people 12 years and older are eligible for vaccination.
“This is not something new,” he said on CNN. “We have mandates in many places in schools, particularly public schools” for diseases such polio, measles, mumps, rubella and hepatitis, he said.
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U.S. health officials have outlined a schedule of administering additional doses after eight months, starting Sept. 20, as vaccine efficacy weakens over time. Last week, Biden wondered publicly if the gap between doses could be shorter.
“Should it be as little as five months?” the president asked during an appearance with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, which is aggressively rolling out booster shots. “That’s being discussed,” he said, adding that he had talked to Fauci about it.
The administration needs clearance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to proceed on boosters, as vaccination experts continue to debate the value and impact of extra doses. The White House quickly clarified its stance, saying that the plan hasn’t changed even though Biden’s interest in a rapid rollout is clear.
In the U.S., 820,000 additional shots have been administered since Aug. 13, when those with compromised immune systems became eligible, according to CDC data.
Fauci said he was concerned that another 100,000 people could die from covid-19 by December because so many Americans are refusing to take the shots. About 637,000 U.S. deaths have been blamed on covid since the pandemic began early last year.
“What is going on now is both entirely predictable, but entirely preventable,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We have about 80 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not yet vaccinated.”
“That’s why it’s so important now, in this crisis that we are in, that people put aside any ideological, political or other differences, and just get vaccinated,” he added.
Most of the Americans killed in the Kabul bombing were 9/11 babies who never knew a nation at peace
They had signed up to do their part, to heal a country – their own – that had not known a moment of peace in their entire lives. Rylee McCollum wanted to become a history teacher, but only after doing what he could as a Marine to serve his country. Hunter Lopez knew this was what he wanted since he was 11 years old. Ryan Knauss knew it in second grade.
The 13 American service members killed in Kabul on Thursday died in gruesome violence, victims of a terrorist bombing. They were, with one exception, 9/11 babies, born within a few years of the terrorist attacks that led the United States into a military conflict that stretched across four presidencies and throughout the lives of these 11 men and two women.
They never knew a United States that was not at war, never lived in the world before the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, a country without ID checks in office buildings, metal detectors at schools, shoes X-rayed at the airport.
Instead, they grew up keenly conscious of security concerns, in a culture now sometimes fixated on safety, always aware of a war on terrorism that men and women in uniform were fighting thousands of miles from home.
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They were in Afghanistan this month not to fight, but to help finally end a war that has lasted two decades. In the pictures they posted, the videos they sent home, they held Afghan babies and guided fleeing families and stood guard in a hectic, precarious place. The stories of battles and bombs they heard in their training had seemed to some like tales of another time, the kind of lore their superiors liked to pass along to the next generation.
On Saturday, as the Pentagon released the names and biographies of those who were killed, their families groped to make some sense of the ultimate loss. Parents and other relatives spoke of these deaths as searing reminders that these young people had lived in the shadow of wars that took place an ocean away, conflicts strangely detached from most Americans’ daily existence.
“Our generation of Marines has been listening to the Iraq/Afghan vets tell their war stories for years,” wrote Mallory Harrison, Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee’s friend and roommate first in the barracks and later at their shared house in North Carolina. “It’s easy for that war & those stories to sound like something so distant – something that you feel like you’re never going to experience since you joined the Marine Corps during peacetime.
“You know it can happen,” Harrison wrote on Facebook. “You raise your hand for all of the deployments, you put in the work. But it’s hard to truly relate to those stories when most of the deployments nowadays involve a trip to [Okinawa] or a boring 6 months on ship. Then bad people do bad things.”
Gee’s car, Harrison wrote, is still “parked in our lot. It’s so mundane. Simple. But it’s there. My very best friend, my person, my sister forever. My other half . . .”
The bombing killed Gee six days after Pentagon officials had tweeted a picture of her cradling an Afghan infant in her arms in Kabul. Gee had reposted that photo on Instagram, adding a caption: “I love my job.”
Gee’s father, Richard Herrera, told The Washington Post that she had texted him from Afghanistan a few days before she died. She had just been in Kuwait and now was helping women and children who sought to flee from the Taliban.
Gee, who was from Roseville, Calif., had set out to become an air traffic controller, but an irregular heartbeat steered her into a position as a maintenance technician. Her father said he had “never expected her to be on the front lines in Afghanistan,” but she told him that “she was having the experience of her life,” he recalled. “And I told her I was proud of her.”
Gee, who was promoted to sergeant last month, was 23 when she died.
So was Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss of Corryton, Tenn. “I want to be a Marine,” he wrote in his second-grade yearbook, drawing himself in uniform.
Knauss recently completed psychological operations training and hoped to serve next in Washington, his relatives said. He was “a motivated young man who loved his country,” his grandfather, Wayne Knauss, told WATE-TV in Knoxville. “He was a believer, so we will see him again in God’s heaven.”
Five of the 13 were 20 years old, as old as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
One 20-year-old, Marine Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, had called his mother from Kabul on Wednesday.
“I love you,” he told Elizabeth Holguin before they hung up. Becoming a Marine had always been Espinoza’s dream, his mother told The Post, and he enlisted right after finishing high school in Rio Bravo, Texas, a small, mostly Hispanic town near Laredo.
“It was his calling, and he died a hero,” Holguin said. She said her heart has “a David-sized hole nobody can fill.”
Another of the 20-year-olds, Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, was a baby on 9/11 and had wanted to join the armed forces since he was 2 years old, according to his sister, Roice. Another sister recalled Rylee as a toddler, carrying around a toy rifle and wearing his sister’s pink princess snow boots.
“He signed up the day he turned 18,” she said. “That was his plan his whole life.”
Rylee, who grew up in Jackson, Wyo., and was a decorated wrestler in high school, had just gotten married on Valentine’s Day before departing on his first overseas assignment in April. He’d been transferred to Afghanistan two weeks ago.
His wife, Jiennah Crayton, who lives in San Diego, was counting the days until McCollum’s return from his tour of duty. She is pregnant, and the couple had hoped Rylee might be home just in time for the arrival of their baby in three weeks, the sister said.
“He would’ve been the best dad,” Crayton wrote on Facebook. “I wish he could see how much of an impact he made on this world.”
The oldest service member killed in Thursday’s attack, Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, who went by Taylor, was 31. He had decided on a military career after seeing New York’s twin towers collapse in the 2001 attack, when he was 11. He enlisted when he was 19.
“Why he did this was because he loves his country,” his father, Darin Hoover, told KUTV in Salt Lake City. “He loves people.”
On Thursday, Taylor, who played football at Hillcrest High School in Midvale, Utah, “led his men into that, and they followed him, but I know, I know in my heart of hearts he was out front,” his father said. “And they would have followed him through the gates of hell if that’s what it took, and ultimately that’s pretty much what he did.”
Ever since two Marines arrived at his doorstep outside Salt Lake City to deliver news of Taylor’s death, his father has heard from other Marines who’d served with his son in Afghanistan and elsewhere and wanted his family to know that they’d been honored to have him as their sergeant.
“They look back on him and say that they’ve learned so much from him,” Darin Hoover told KUTV. “One heck of a leader.”
Darin Hoover said he did not want his son’s legacy to be tarnished by the politics of how the war in Afghanistan ended. The father wanted the eldest of his three children to be remembered instead simply as “a great young man” who decided 20 years ago that a historic attack on his country would shape the course of his life.
The father recalled: “He decided, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ “
For some other families of the fallen, the circumstances of these deaths are colored by politics. Some sounded like President Biden when they spoke of the American involvement in Afghanistan, as they wondered why U.S. military forces remained on the ground for so many years, the mission never entirely clear to many of the troops, the endgame never quite certain.
On the first day after two Marine bereavement officers showed up at his front door, Steve Nikoui struggled to assess what had happened to his boy, Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, who was 20 years old.
“I haven’t been able to grasp everything that’s going on,” Steve Nikoui told the Daily Beast. “He was born the same year it started, and ended his life with the end of this war.”
Although the father felt a duty to “respect the office” of the presidency, “Biden turned his back on him,” Steve Nikoui said. “That’s it.”
He told Reuters that “I’m really disappointed in the way that the president has handled this, even more so the way the military has handled it. The commanders on the ground should have recognized this threat and addressed it.”
The father, a carpenter in Norco, Calif., said he’d been pleased to see his son join the Marines while Donald Trump was president because “I really believed this guy didn’t want to send people into harm’s way. They sent my son over there as a paper pusher.”
The way the war is ending has divided the bereaved families just as it has split the nation.
Twenty-three hundred miles from Nikoui’s home, in Berlin Heights, Ohio, the same knock at the door came from two Navy notification officers, and now Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak’s sister Marilyn finds herself one of 12 surviving siblings in a family that will never be the same.
“I’ve never been one for politics and I’m not going to start now,” Marilyn Soviak wrote on Instagram. “What I will say is that my beautiful, intelligent, beat-to-the-sound of his own drum, annoying, charming baby brother was killed yesterday helping to save lives. He was a … medic. There to help people . . . He was just a kid. We are sending kids over there to die. Kids with families that now have holes just like ours.”
Max Soviak, who was 22, was the only sailor killed in the bombing. His last words to his mother came recently over video chat. He assured her that he’d be okay.
“Don’t worry, Mom. My guys got me,” he said. “They won’t let anything happen to me.”
On Friday, after the knock on the door, his mother “realized that they all” – Max and his guys – “just went together,” according to a statement his parents, Kip and Rachel, gave to The Post.
Their son, who had played on the football, wrestling, tennis and track teams in high school, had wanted to make the Navy his career.
Marine Cpl. Hunter Lopez had formed a solid plan, too. His father is a captain and his mother a deputy in the sheriff’s department in Riverside County, Calif., and Hunter, who was 22, intended to follow his parents into the same office, according to a statement from the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association.
“Like his parents who serve our community, being a Marine to Hunter wasn’t a job; it was a calling,” the statement said.
“This kid knew since he was 11 what he wanted to do,” Hunter’s uncle, JC Lopez, said on Facebook. “Every free moment was spent training and perfecting his craft. Hunter, you did your job. Rest now.”
Biden to withdraw U.S. diplomatic staff from Afghanistan as future relationship with the Taliban remains unclear
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is planning to withdraw the U.S. ambassador and all diplomatic staff in Afghanistan by Tuesday, and it is unclear when – or if – they might return to the country, according to two U.S. officials.
Despite the Taliban’s expressed interest in having the United States maintain a diplomatic mission in Kabul, the Biden administration has not made a final decision about what a future presence might look like. On Friday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Biden administration is “actively discussing” the Taliban’s request with U.S. allies and partners in the region – but the United States has not yet engaged directly with the Taliban to discuss what form a diplomatic mission might take, according to one U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy deliberations.
The lack of a set plan all but ensures that the United States’ diplomatic presence in Kabul will lapse for weeks, months or even longer – potentially complicating the Biden administration’s ability to make good on recent assurances that although the U.S. military is departing the country by Aug. 31, the United States will continue to help Americans and Afghans who want to leave after they are gone.
The Biden administration will also have to decide whether to formally recognize a Taliban government, a decision that also may take some time and may be a factor in any return, officials said.
“We’re developing detailed plans for how we can continue to provide consular support and facilitate departures for those who wish to leave after August 31,” a senior State Department official said, when asked about how the United States will be able to assist those who remain. The officials said the administration is “looking at a series of options with regard to our diplomatic engagement.”
There are an estimated 350 Americans still in Afghanistan who have told U.S. officials they want to get out of the country, a State Department spokesperson said Saturday, noting that some of those individuals may have already found passage out of Kabul. The State Department also has made contact with an additional 280 people who have claimed to be Americans in Afghanistan but either have not communicated their plans, or said they intend to stay behind.
On Saturday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that any U.S. passport holder who wants to get into the Kabul airport can get in, even though the evacuations are winding down. Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor reported that between 3 a.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Saturday, 6,800 people were airlifted out of Kabul – 4,000 of them on U.S. military planes. That is far less than earlier this week, when upward of 21,000 people were being evacuated on a daily basis.
Taylor said a total of about 117,000 people – “the vast majority of which are Afghans” – have been flown out of Hamid Karzai International Airport since the evacuation operation began Aug. 14.
Yet for thousands of other Afghans fearful of returning to life under repressive Taliban rule – including many who provided assistance the U.S. military, diplomatic and nongovernmental missions and may be eligible for evacuation – the chances of departing Kabul before the end of the month are slim.
The military has begun carting out equipment on flights, leaving less room for people to board. Most gates to the airport have been closed – an apparent response to Thursday’s suicide bombing by an Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan, which killed 13 U.S. service members and over 170 others, most of them Afghans.
The United States retaliated on Friday with a drone strike that killed what Pentagon officials are calling two “ISIS-K planners and facilitators,” though they refused to answer questions about whether those individuals had any role in orchestrating the Kabul airport attack.
“This strike was not the last,” Biden said in a statement Saturday, noting that another attack is “highly likely” to occur in the next 24 to 36 hours. “The situation on the ground continues to be extremely dangerous,” he added, noting that he has directed the military “to take every possible measure to prioritize force protection.”
One U.S. official familiar with the situation said Saturday that the bombing in Kabul marked a “capping point where the main evacuation ended.” Evacuations have continued, the official said, but have been scaled back and focused heavily on people already inside the airport.
On Saturday, the Taliban’s de facto leader released a video message appealing with Afghans to let the United States complete its withdrawal before trying to leave the country, promising that “no one will prevent” Afghans with the proper documents from leaving the country afterward.
“Afghans who have documents, passports, and want to go abroad, they have the right to do so,” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar said, according to a translation provided by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghan peace negotiations. “Let the foreign forces withdraw first, finish their evacuation and then our compatriots – whether they have worked with the Americans or otherwise – may leave the country if they want . . . all airports, particularly Kabul airport, will be open for their travel.”
“The statement is positive,” Khalilzad noted on Twitter. “We, our allies, and the international community will hold them to these commitments.”
The United States is engaged in talks about the future management of the Kabul airport, discussions that involve the private sector, regional partners such as Turkey and the Taliban, officials said.
When asked whether the United States was seeking assurances on women’s rights from the Taliban before approving a diplomatic presence, Price said a future Afghan government that does not respect the rights of its people and uphold counterterrorism commitments is “almost certainly a government we cannot work with.”
The Taliban’s request for international recognition comes as it grapples with a bleak economic outlook for the country that is now its to govern, after Western nations froze billions of dollars of Afghanistan government assets and blocked promised aid money following the rapid takeover.
Afghanistan’s financial and commercial sectors are not considered to be vibrant enough to keep the economy afloat without at least some of those funds, making the release of government assets and development aid key factors in any forthcoming negotiations about reestablishing formal diplomatic ties with a Taliban-led Afghanistan.
In considering retaining a diplomatic presence, Price said Friday that the safety and security of U.S. personnel in that mission would be “first and foremost on our minds,” particularly after Thursday’s deadly suicide bombing.
A senior State Department official said that the Biden administration would remain “relentlessly focused on using every appropriate tool at our disposal to do everything possible to uphold the basic rights of all Afghans, as we continue to use every instrument of national power to ensure that terrorists cannot use Afghanistan to threaten our security and that of our allies.”
But on the ground, service members are a lot less sanguine about what they are leaving behind.
“We lost a war, and everyone who is trying to spin it differently is just trying to save face,” said one U.S. official familiar with the situation in Kabul. Although the official acknowledged that a large number of evacuations have occurred, he said he was sure that not all of the Afghans who needed to flee the Taliban have been able to. He cited Afghan attack pilots he was aware of who were still in hiding.
“We’re going to pat ourselves on the back for exceeding the high score on other evacuations, but we didn’t get all of the right people,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to see some people get lucky – beyond lucky – and other people who needed it did not.”
Asean reports lower new Covid cases and deaths but Philippines extends lockdown
Southeast Asia saw a decrease in new Covid-19 cases and related deaths on Saturday, collated data showed. Asean countries reported 85,894 infections and 1,778 deaths on Saturday, lower than 87,340 and 1,845 respectively on Friday.
Singapore‘s Ministry of Health is delivering Covid-19 rapid antigen test kits (ATKs) to citizens by post until September 27.
Each household will receive six ATKs and instructions on how to use and drop them off properly.
Meanwhile, the ministry will hand out three ATKs per person to students and staff at kindergartens, children development centres, elementary schools and special education schools from September 13.
Schools will contact parents to ensure that students are used to antigen rapid tests for Covid-19.
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Phillippines President Rodrigo Duterte decided to extend measures to contain the spread of Covid-19 in Manila and some provinces until September 7 this year.
Though some businesses were allowed to reopen, people were not allowed to dine at restaurants, use personal health services or perform religious activities.
Asean reports lower new Covid cases and deaths but Philippines extends lockdown
Philippines had the second highest number of cases in the region on Saturday with 19,441 patients and 167 deaths, up from Friday’s 17,447 and 113 respectively.
Malaysia had the most cases in Asean with 22,597 patients and 252 deaths.
Asean reports lower new Covid cases and deaths but Philippines extends lockdown
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