KABUL, Afghanistan — A Taliban official says an explosion has gone off in front of a military hospital in Kabul, causing casualties.

A spokesperson for the Taliban-run Interior Ministry wrote in a tweet that Tuesday's blast went off at one of the gates to the Sardar Mohammad Dawood Khan military hospital.

The spokesperson said the number of casualties was not immediately known and that special forces were at the scene.

Kabul residents had heard two explosions in the area and also reported the sound of gunfire.

The blast is just the latest deadly explosion in Afghanistan since Taliban forces overtook the U.S.-backed government as the American military began its withdrawal in August.

Days before completing the withdrawal, a suicide bombing by a suspected ISIS terrorist at the gates of Kabul's airport killed more than 100 people, including 13 U.S. service members.

Last month, a bombing at a Shiite mosque killed at least 47 people and left 70 others wounded.

CLINTON, Tenn. — When Travis Ervin left Afghanistan in 2010, he thought his mission in the war-torn country was complete. But this former Marine, who was tasked with clearing the cities of Marjah and Sangin from the Taliban, has found himself on a new mission: rescuing the interpreter he went to combat with.

As the country fell back into the hands of the Taliban in August, Ervin and his girlfriend began working to get his interpreter and his interpreter's family safely out of the country.

Because circumstances are still incredibly dangerous, Ervin asked that his interpreter's name not be published for this story.

"He was in gunfights with me, I've seen him pick up my dead Marines and carry them to a helicopter, and we’re just going to leave this guy and leave his family. It’s up to the American people to do this, to help these people," Ervin said, holding back tears.

For two months, Ervin and his girlfriend deployed all their backchannel resources in an effort to rescue his interpreter and his family. Eventually, he was able to get the interpreter's family to the airport in Kabul. It was a painstakingly dangerous process that finally got them to the United States.

Last week, the family arrived in East Tennessee, where they are now refugees living in Ervin's home.

"We wake up and hear the kids running around. It was like, 'This is the greatest day of my life,' being woken up by these kids," he said.

Ervin’s basement has been converted into a bedroom and prayer room. This family, who’s never had electricity before, is now starting a new life. Community donations for everything from food to clothes to toys for the kids have been pouring in.

In an effort to help the family with legal fees and housing costs, a GoFund Me has been created aimed at raising $150,000.

"You have to understand that these people come from real oppression," he added.

But the mission is far from over. While Ervin was able to get his interpreter's wife and kids safely to Tennessee, his interpreter was separated from the family during Afghanistan's collapse and remains overseas.
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"I will always help the Afghan people, always. These people need our help. It’s not up to the government. People think the government will come in with a cape and help. That's not going to happen. We need to help these people," he said passionately.

But Ervin is determined to not lose sight of the major victory that’s already been accomplished. The mere fact that this family is here that a 7-year-old daughter is starting school in America, is a victory within itself.

"Research Afghanistan and women going to school and think about this little girl going into a classroom. We’re so lucky. This family is so lucky; it’s hard to put into words. It really is," he added.

Travis Ervin’s latest mission may still not be complete, this is a victory he will savor for now.

When retired U.S. Marine Corps Officer Robert Koenig saw the fall of Afghanistan, his mind went right to his former interpreter and what he could do to help the man who helped him for so long.

That's when he came up with Ruck for Refugees.

With flags and his backpack, Robert Koenig made the 145-mile journey from Omaha to Hartington, Nebraska.

The purpose is what kept him going.

“I kind of started thinking about like well how far did they have to go to get from their homes to Kabul airport to get to safety and it was 100, roughly 140 miles so that was the number that I, that was the number that I picked,” Koenig said.

"Ruck for Refugees" is just one way Koenig is raising money to help 33 family members of an interpreter who helped him in Afghanistan.

“You know, he kept me alive. He gave him the successes that we had while I was there and my fellow officers who were out there were doing it to a large part of the job that he did with us,” Koenig said.

He's talking about Deputy Mubarak.

He moved to Florida in 2009 but his family stayed in Afghanistan.

Until this August when they had to leave.

“The Taliban was already rolling through the countryside and looking for people like his family who had family members that work for the Americans, specifically combat interpreters who had been out on operation,” Koenig said.

Mubarak's loved ones are now in Texas going through the immigration process to move to Florida, but they'll need a place to stay.

That's why Koenig is trying to raise $250,000 for a down payment on a housing unit to keep them all together.

He knows it's a lot of money but says he made a promise to help, and he's determined to keep it.

“It was not it was never even a consideration of like, you know, the why, it was just the how, like, this has to happen,” Koenig said.

To donate to their GoFundMe, click here.

To visit their website, click here.

Video above: Afghanistan on brink of poverty under Taliban

The State Department informed congressional staff Thursday that it is in touch with 363 U.S. citizens in Afghanistan, 176 of whom want to leave, two sources familiar with the call told CNN.

The figures presented on that call underscore the ongoing challenge faced by the Biden administration as Americans continue to come forward to seek help in leaving Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover and the chaotic U.S. withdrawal.

Thursday's numbers — combined with evacuation figures since Aug. 31 — present a far higher count of Americans looking to leave Afghanistan than the administration publicly estimated at the time of the U.S. withdrawal.

The day prior to the U.S. evacuation was completed at the end of August, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the State Department was tracking "a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave."

More than 200 U.S. citizens have been evacuated by the U.S. government in the nearly two months since the military withdrawal, but the number of Americans who are seeking to leave Afghanistan is still in the range of 100 to 200 people.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price noted this week that more people have come forward amid the ongoing evacuation efforts.

Biden administration officials have consistently pointed to the difficulty of tracking the number of U.S. citizens in the country, and it is unclear how many total Americans were in the country at the time of the U.S. withdrawal on Aug. 31.

In his remarks at the end of August, Blinken noted that there "are long-time residents of Afghanistan who have American passports, and who were trying to determine whether or not they wanted to leave."

"Many are dual-citizen Americans with deep roots and extended families in Afghanistan, who have resided there for many years. For many, it's a painful choice," he said.

"If an American in Afghanistan tells us that they want to stay for now, and then in a week or a month or a year they reach out and say, 'I've changed my mind,' we will help them leave," Blinken added.

On Thursday evening, Price tweeted that the U.S. "has facilitated the departure of 234 U.S. citizens and 144 LPRs [lawful permanent residents] from Kabul since August 31."

"These are the numbers of people whose individual departures we directly facilitated. An additional number of U.S. citizens and LPRs have departed on private charters or have independently crossed via a land border," another State Department spokesperson told CNN Friday.

"The number of U.S. citizens and LPRs we assist is dynamic as we review manifests, receive reports from colleagues in the field, and assist with departures," they said.

In addition to the more than 100 U.S. citizens who are seeking assistance in leaving Afghanistan, there are scores of Afghans — many of whom worked for the U.S. military — who were left behind during the U.S. military withdrawal and are desperately trying to leave.

EVENDALE, Ohio — There’s something to be said about keeping secrets, and GE Aviation has done a pretty good job with that over the years. During the early 1980s, many of its employees built engines in a special assembly line, but never knew what aircraft the engine would fly.

“When they first started to produce these, they had to build a separate classified production line so the people in the manufacturing plant couldn’t know what they were making, and they were shipped in crates off to Burbank, California, to Lockheed Martin to put them in the jet,” said Cole Massie, media relations for GE Aviation.

Those engines powered the F-117 Stealth Fighter.

GE Aviation got its footing on military aviation, despite it being only about 15% of the work it does today. The major work the company does is tied to commercial aircraft engine building. As you drive along I-75, you can’t help but notice the gigantic GE Aviation facility in Evandale.

“The Air Force actually encouraged GE to buy this plant,” Massie said.

Over the years, GE Aviation played a critical role in every major combat situation, whether through its first venture into aviation technology ensuring World War II bombers could get to their target, or the A-10 Warthog flying inverted toward enemy tanks on the battlefield. Engineers continue to gain the eye of Air Force contracts.

“The Air Force is fielding the F-15EX, which is the most up-to-date version of the F-15, and the Air Force selected GE’s engine to power the first eight examples of that jet,” Massie said.

GE Aviation is also working on a prototype engine to attempt to revolutionize the Air Force fleet.

“This is the next generation of engine architecture,” said David Tweedie, general manager of Advanced Combat Engines for GE Aviation.

He says the XA100 hit the drawing board in 2007 and it’s taken this long to get full testing underway.

“Right now, it’s a prototype we’re looking forward to putting into production for the F-35 and the airplanes that come beyond the F-35,” Tweedie said. “We have now run the two prototype engines; currently running the second.”

The engine design is called adaptive and will seamlessly change fuel use based on the need of the pilot or situation in flight.

“Fighter engines are typically sized to maximize thrust at the expense of fuel efficiency,” said Tweedie.

The XA100, according to Tweedie, will change the game when it comes to that fuel efficiency component, extending the capability of the Air Force and any aircraft flying it.

“They will fly and operate the airplane the way they will normally do, and the engine will decide which mode is most appropriate based on what’s needed at that point,” Tweedie said.

The House of Representatives has given GE Aviation an expected deadline of 2027 for full production status.

It’s another engine in a long history of engines created in secret to maintain the military advantage over other countries.

“If you think about some of the secret programs that have come to light in the past, you think about the F-117 Stealth Fighter. That engine was built by GE under complete secrecy,” Massie said. “The B-2 has GE engines. Those were developed in secrecy. The U-2 spy plane has GE engines developed in secrecy, and GE has a history of working on classified and military products and this is the next in a long line of military programs.”

There are approximately 1,400 military veterans currently working at GE Aviation. The company was recently named a Top Veteran-Friendly Company by U.S. Veterans Magazine.

If you have a veteran story to tell in your community, email homefront@wcpo.com. You also can join the Homefront Facebook group, follow Craig McKee on Facebook and find more Homefront stories here.

The U.S. has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to a desperately poor Afghanistan on the brink of an economic disaster, while refusing to give political recognition to the country's new Taliban rulers, the Taliban said Sunday.

The statement came at the end of the first direct talks between the former foes since the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of August.

The U.S. statement was less definitive, saying only that the two sides "discussed the United States' provision of robust humanitarian assistance, directly to the Afghan people."

The Taliban said the talks held in Doha, Qatar, "went well," with Washington freeing up humanitarian aid to Afghanistan after agreeing not to link such assistance to formal recognition of the Taliban.

The United States made it clear that the talks were in no way a preamble to recognition of the Taliban, who swept into power Aug. 15 after the U.S.-allied government collapsed.

State Department spokesman Ned Price called the discussions "candid and professional," with the U.S. side reiterating that the Taliban will be judged on their actions, not only their words.

"The U.S. delegation focused on security and terrorism concerns and safe passage for U.S. citizens, other foreign nationals and our Afghan partners, as well as on human rights, including the meaningful participation of women and girls in all aspects of Afghan society," he said in a statement.

Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen also told The Associated Press that the movement's interim foreign minister assured the U.S. during the talks that the Taliban are committed to seeing that Afghan soil is not used by extremists to launch attacks against other countries.

On Saturday, however, the Taliban ruled out cooperation with Washington on containing the increasingly active Islamic State group in Afghanistan.

IS, an enemy of the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for a number of recent attacks, including Friday's suicide bombing that killed 46 minority Shiite Muslims. Washington considers IS its greatest terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan.

"We are able to tackle Daesh independently," Shaheen said when asked whether the Taliban would work with the U.S. to contain the Islamic State affiliate. He used an Arabic acronym for IS.

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who tracks militant groups, agreed the Taliban do not need Washington's help to hunt down and destroy Afghanistan's IS affiliate, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or ISKP.

The Taliban "fought 20 years to eject the U.S., and the last thing it needs is the return of the U.S. It also doesn't need U.S. help," said Roggio, who also produces the foundation's Long War Journal. "The Taliban has to conduct the difficult and time-consuming task of rooting out ISKP cells and its limited infrastructure. It has all the knowledge and tools it needs to do it."

The IS affiliate doesn't have the advantage of safe havens in Pakistan and Iran that the Taliban had in its fight against the United States, Roggio said. However, he warned that the Taliban's longtime support for al-Qaida make them unreliable as counterterrorism partners with the United States.

The Taliban gave refuge to al-Qaida before it carried out the 9/11 attacks. That prompted the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from power.

"It is insane for the U.S. to think the Taliban can be a reliable counterterrorism partner, given the Taliban's enduring support for al-Qaida," Roggio said.

During the meeting, U.S. officials were expected to press the Taliban to allow Americans and others to leave Afghanistan. In their statement, the Taliban said without elaborating that they would "facilitate principled movement of foreign nationals."

—-

AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed.

RICHMOND, Va. — For Hamidullah Noori, every day brings a new chance to share a part of himself and his homeland in a new country.

“When I see more people coming in, I feel proud,” he said. “Every morning when I wake up, just coming to work, is another day to serve the community, another day to serve your people.”

Chef Noori, as he’s known, is the owner of “The Mantu,” a restaurant specializing in cuisine from Afghanistan. The restaurant name means "me and you," and he opened it in Richmond, Virginia just a few years ago.

After having worked with Americans in Afghanistan, he and his family were forced to flee the country in 2015 on a Special Immigrant Visa.

“We were threatened by a group called the Taliban and we were not safe,” he said.

Since 2001, approximately 97,000 Afghan refugees have been resettled in the U.S., with the following states receiving the largest share of them:

1. California
2. Texas
3. Virginia
4. Washington
5. Maryland
6. New York
7. Georgia
8. Arizona
9. Colorado
10. Missouri

When Chef Noori first arrived in Virginia, though, there were few Afghans around. It was a tough transition.

“We were totally lost because it's a totally different world,” he said.

However, Chef Noori had a dream.

“My dream was, when I came to the United States, was to show off my skills and see if I can bring attention of other people, to introduce Afghani culture,” he said.

Working six days a week, in three different jobs, he started saving money. He also reached out to resettlement agencies that initially helped him and offered his culinary services.

“'If any refugees are coming from Afghanistan or if you guys have any meetings about the refugees, so let me know. I'll bring food and cook,’” he recalled telling them. “So, I used to cook free food for most of these places without charging them anything.”

Soon, word spread. The owner of the restaurant where Chef Noori had been working at the time tried his food.

“He tasted the food and said, ‘Wow, it's really good food,’” he recalled. “And [he] said, ‘I think I can help you to achieve your dream.’”

Through social media, others also stepped forward to help invest in that dream— from helping with kitchen equipment to even creating signage for the restaurant.

“The people of Richmond, as soon as I said, ‘I'm going to open a restaurant,' and they put it in a social media. Every individual came and supported me,” he said.

Now, Chef Noori is paying it forward by cooking food for new refugees now arriving from Afghanistan, letting them know they’re not alone.

“That’s the best thing: to serve your community, to serve your people,” Chef Noori said, “and the best thing would be to serve your culture.”

CHICAGO — Art can be beautiful and inspirational. But for some artists, creating works that stir the soul and the mind goes beyond just the brush and canvas.

Socio-political activist and artist Pritika Chowdhry focuses her work on reframing traumatic geopolitical events like 9/11. She sees art as a way to ask difficult questions.

“This is the artist asking, 'God are you there? Do you see what's happening? Are you still there?'”

She studies seismic geopolitical events in depth and channels that into her artwork.

“And then, I try to excavate things from those events that have been not spoken about as much as they probably should have been,” she explained.

Chowdhry calls these the counter-memories of trauma. Sept. 11, for example, she says became about never forgetting the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day. But she says the lives lost went far beyond that in countries half a world away.

“In the context of 9/11, it's almost unpatriotic to say, ‘Hey, but what about all these other lives that are now in the millions that were lost?'”

Chowdhry has channeled that notion in what she calls the Counter Memory Project, an effort to memorialize the "unbearable memories."

“This is a...this is a scale of justice," she said.

In one of her works "Ungrievable Lives: Ghosts of 9/11," she examines what she calls the "differential values placed on human life."

“The heavier side has this gold bullion bar, and it says, ‘One life 9/11, 2001.’ And then if you turn it over, it says. ‘One of 2,983. Made in America.’”

It’s a commentary on what lives are worth shedding tears over and which ones are not.

“What is this gold standard? Clearly, an American life,” said Chowdhry.

On the other side of the scale rests a piece of meat, hair, and nail clippings.

“This is representative, as I was saying earlier of the non-American lives that we do not grieve for,” said Chowdhry.

It’s undoubtedly provocative, something Chowdhry knows all too well.

“I'm an American citizen. I love this country despite all its flaws. I do. I call this home,” she said. “It's OK for us to let our guard down once in a while to introspect and see we, even as a powerful moral nation get it wrong.”

Getting it wrong was punctuated in recent weeks as the last known missile fired in Afghanistan by the U.S. military last turned out to be a grave error.

The botched American drone strike killed 10 civilians including seven children. The youngest child Sumaya was just 2 years old. On September 17, weeks after the strike, General Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, acknowledged the civilian causalities.

“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” said McKenzie. “But it was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology.”

It was a stunning admission coming at the end of the United States’ longest-running war. But Chowdhry says she is optimistic that it was a signal of change.

“Maybe there is a there is a shift,” she said. “We're finally witnessing a shift after 20 years where I think finally people even in America are realizing that maybe what we're doing is wrong and maybe the people over there are human, are grievable.”

And while she knows some may be angered by her anti-memorial work, she hopes to tilt the scale to the center, valuing each life lost as equally tragic and worthy of remembrance.

The Marine Corps is refuting implications that Lance Cpl. Hunter Clark was the person who lifted a baby to safety at the Kabul airport.

Clark told an audience at a rally for former President Donald Trump that he is “the guy that pulled the baby over the wall.”

Trump also claimed Clark helped evacuate children over the airport wall.

In a statement, obtained by CNN, the Marine Corps said Clark is not the person in the image.

"Regarding the viral photo that began circulating around August 20, 2021, the Marine identified in that particular image was not LCpl Clark," Kelton Cochran, a spokesman for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit said in a statement.

Clark’s mother attempted to explain the situation. She told CNN that her son “helped the baby once it was lifted over the wall.”

The statement from the Marines didn’t reference whether Clark could have been handed the baby.

Clark is reportedly being investigated for participating in the Trump rally.

The Department of Defense has a policy against active-duty members participating in political events.

It has been three weeks since the United States completed its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

The country is back under the rule of the Taliban, which took over quickly.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently announced Ohio will resettle 855 Afghan evacuees, including 50 in Cincinnati.

A Cincinnati family who is native to Afghanistan is desperate to get their extended family to America.

Husna Khan, 17, is a senior at Walnut Hills High Schools. She was born in Afghanistan and came to America with her parents and two siblings when she was 8 years old.

"You feel so thankful for the opportunities you have here in the U.S.," she said. "But you also feel this sense of guilt that it's your own people, your own aunts and uncles, your own family members are still stuck there."

Khan and her family visited Afghanistan this summer and left just a few days before the Taliban invaded Kabul. Now the family is fearing for family members still in Afghanistan.

"One of my uncles has already been captured. The Taliban are going door to door," Khan said.

"I have a cousin that literally had one month left of medical school before she got her M.D.," she said through tears. "Completely shut down. She won't be able to do it.

Khan said her mother started the application paperwork to bring her siblings to America, but the timeline is not promising.

"That process typically takes about 14 years for people in Afghanistan. We don't have 14 years," Khan said.

Khan's mother, who we are not identifying by name due to her family ties in Afghanistan, went to medical school under Taliban rule. She is now a doctor in Cincinnati.

"You wake up at night and you think about them and you cannot go back to sleep," she said. "Especially people who are highly educated. They are educated for 20 years and now it's gone. Their education is wasted. Now they have to be under restricted rule, staying at home, especially girls. They do not have any hope."

Khan's mother said she was captured once by the Taliban but released a few days later. She is discouraged hearing that so many women and girls are losing their access to education.

Khan started a virtual mentoring program at the beginning of 2020 to help mentor Afghan women and girls and teach them English. She estimates her program has helped more than 100 women and girls.

"So many brilliant people, they deserve to have opportunities here," Khan said.

Sorry is not enough for the Afghan survivors of an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 10 members of their family, including seven children.

Emal Ahmadi, whose 3-year-old daughter Malika was killed on Aug. 29, when the U.S. hellfire missile struck his elder brother's car, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the family demands Washington investigate who fired the drone and punish the military personnel responsible for the strike.

"That is not enough for us to say sorry," said Ahmadi. "The U.S.A. should find the person who did this."

Video above: Pentagon now calls deadly Kabul strike an error

Ahmadi said the family is also seeking financial compensation for their losses and demanded that several members of the family be relocated to a third country, without specifying which country.

The AP and other news organizations in Kabul reported after the strike that the driver of the targeted vehicle, Zemerai Ahmadi, was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and cited an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

The missile struck as the car was pulling into the family's driveway and the children ran to greet Zemerai.

On Friday, U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, called the strike a "tragic mistake," and after weeks of denials, said that innocent civilians were indeed killed in the attack and not an Islamic State extremist as was announced earlier.

The drone strike followed a devastating suicide bombing by the Islamic State group — a rival of the Taliban — that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel at one of the gates to the Kabul airport. For days, desperate Afghans had swarmed the checkpoints outside the airport, trying to leave the country amid the chaotic U.S. and NATO troops pullout, fearing for their future under the Taliban.

McKenzie apologized for the error and said the United States is considering making reparation payments to the family of the victims.

Emal Ahmadi, who said he heard of the apology from friends in America, insisted that it won't bring back members of his family and while he expressed relief for the U.S. apology and recognition that his family members were innocent victims, he said he was frustrated that it took weeks of pleading with Washington to at least make a call to the family.

Even as evidence mounted to the contrary, Pentagon officials asserted that the strike had been conducted correctly, to protect the U.S. troops remaining at Kabul's airport ahead of the final pullout the following day, on Aug. 30.

Looking exhausted, sitting in front of the charred ruins of Zemarai's car, Ahmadi said he wanted more than an apology from the United States — he wanted justice, including an investigation into who carried out the strike "and I want him punished by the U.S.A."

In the days before the Pentagon's apology, accounts from the family, documents from colleagues seen by The AP and the scene at the family home — where Zemerai’s car was struck by the missile — all sharply contradicted the accounts by the U.S. military. Instead, they painted the picture of a family that had worked for Americans and were trying to gain visas to the U.S., fearing for their lives under the Taliban.

Zemerai was the family's breadwinner had looked after his three brothers, including Emal, and their children.

Bernat Armangue

"Now I am then one who is responsible for all my family and I am jobless," said Emal Ahmadi. The situation "is not good," said Ahmadi of life under the Taliban. International aid groups and the United Nations have warned of a looming humanitarian crisis that could drive most Afghans below the poverty level.

McKenzie said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an "earnest belief" — based on a standard of "reasonable certainty" — that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at the Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk, he said.

But Ahmadi wondered how the family's home could have been mistaken for an Islamic State hideout.

"The U.S.A. can see from everywhere," he said of U.S. drone capabilities. "They can see that there were innocent children near the car and in the car. Whoever did this should be punished."

"It isn't right," he added.

A United States military investigation into a deadly Kabul drone strike on a vehicle in August has found it killed 10 civilians and the driver and that the vehicle targeted was likely not a threat associated with ISIS-K, announced Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top general of U.S. Central Command, at the Pentagon on Friday.

McKenzie told reporters that the strike was a "mistake" and offered an apology.

"This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport, but it was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology," he said.

McKenzie added that he is "fully responsible for this strike and this tragic outcome."

The Pentagon had maintained that at least one ISIS-K facilitator and three civilians were killed in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley had previously called a "righteous strike" on the compound on Aug. 29. The investigation released Friday found that all of those killed in the residential compound were civilians.

In the lead up to the strike, drone operators surveilled the courtyard for up to 4 to 5 minutes. In that time, a male driver left the vehicle. One child was parking the vehicle and other children were present in the car and the courtyard — as CNN had been told by the Ahmadi family.

The military based the strike on a reasonable certainty standard to launch the strike on the vehicle. Tragically, it was the wrong vehicle, a U.S. military official familiar with the investigation told CNN earlier Friday, adding that reasonable certainty is not 100% certainty.

"We didn't take the strike because we thought we were wrong — we took the strike because we thought we had a good target," McKenzie said.

Previously, U.S. Central Command pointed to "significant secondary explosions" as evidence of a "substantial amount of explosive material" in the vehicle. On Friday, the U.S. military source said that after reviewing footage from infra-red sensors, they would no longer characterize this as an explosion -- instead, it was more of a flare up.

The U.S. official said that in the time leading up to the strike, the U.S. had at least 60 different intelligence reports about threat streams toward U.S. forces at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

On Friday, Milley released a statement on the strike calling it "a horrible tragedy."

"In a dynamic high-threat environment, the commanders on the ground had appropriate authority and had reasonable certainty that the target was valid, but after deeper post-strike analysis, our conclusion is that innocent civilians were killed," Milley said in a statement.

"This is a horrible tragedy of war and its [sic] heart wrenching and we are committed to being fully transparent about this incident," he added.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

Related video above: Iowa may receive 695 Afghan evacuees for resettlement

The Biden administration began notifying governors and state refugee coordinators across the country about how many Afghan evacuees from among the first group of nearly 37,000 arrivals are slated to be resettled in their states.

California is projected to take more arrivals than any other — more than 5,200 people, according to State Department data for the Afghan Placement and Assistance program obtained by The Associated Press.

Alabama and Mississippi are each slated to welcome 10, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Hawaii, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia are not expected to resettle anyone from the first group of evacuees who fled during the final days of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal last month.

The administration has requested funding from Congress to help resettle 65,000 Afghans in the United States by the end of this month and 95,000 by September 2022. President Joe Biden tapped the former governor of his home state of Delaware, Jack Markell, to temporarily serve as his point person on resettling Afghan evacuees in the United States.

States with a historically large number of Afghans who resettled in the U.S. over the last 20 years — including California, Maryland, Texas and Virginia — are again welcoming a disproportionate number of evacuees, according to the data. Many gravitate to northern Virginia, the Maryland suburbs of D.C. and northern California — some of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

Oklahoma, which over the course of the 20-year war had resettled a relatively small number of Afghans, is slated to resettle 1,800 new arrivals.

Many of the new evacuees requested to be resettled in those states because they already have family and close friends living in those states, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the calls to state government officials. Resettlement agencies also have a large presence and capacity in many of those states.

The State Department resettled evacuees based on the advice of local affiliates of nine national resettlement agencies the U.S. government is working with, the officials said.

The officials said Afghan evacuees are advised that other parts of the country -- including areas with plentiful job openings and cheaper housing -- could be good places to begin their new lives in the U.S.

The Afghan evacuees go through a Department of Homeland Security-coordinated process of security vetting before being admitted. And every evacuee who comes into the United States also goes through health screening. Evacuees who are 12 and older are required to get the COVID-19 vaccination as a term of their humanitarian parolee status after entering the country.

Still, there have been unexpected complications.

U.S.-bound flights for evacuees who had been staying temporarily in third-country processing sites were halted last week after measles cases were discovered among several Afghans who had recently arrived in the U.S.

Some of the recent Afghan arrivals could also face a tough road ahead if Congress doesn't take action to treat them as refugees arriving in the U.S.

The Afghan evacuees are not currently eligible for food stamps, cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for low income families, Medicaid or other traditional refugee services that are funded through the Department of Health and Human Services.

Currently, each Afghan evacuee is slated to receive $1,225 to help with rent, furniture and food and provide a small amount of pocket money. Biden has called on Congress to take action to ensure that the recent arrivals have access to the same benefits as refugees.