Five years after the Abbey Gate bombing killed 13 American heroes in Kabul, President Trump proclaims a day of remembrance as a Pentagon review panel uncovers hidden classified documents and the ISIS-K bomber faces American justice.
Five years after an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated a body-worn bomb at Abbey Gate in Kabul, President Trump proclaimed August 26, 2026, a national day of commemoration for the 13 American service members who died in the attack. The anniversary lands as the terrorist behind the bombing faces American justice and as a Pentagon review panel reveals it uncovered classified documents that were hidden from the families of the fallen. The White House proclamation calls the tragedy one of the worst military disasters in the nation's history and promises the failures that led to it will never be repeated.
The attack at 5:36 p.m. on August 26, 2021, killed 11 Marines, one Navy hospital corpsman, and one Army soldier, wounded 45 more Americans, and injured more than 160 civilians who were trying to escape the Taliban takeover. The bomber was one of thousands of prisoners the Taliban had freed just two months earlier after seizing control of the country.
The proclamation names each of the fallen: Army Staff Sergeant Ryan C. Knauss; Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Darin T. Hoover; Sergeant Johanny Rosario Pichardo; Sergeant Nicole L. Gee; Corporal Hunter Lopez; Corporal Daegan W. Page; Corporal Humberto A. Sanchez; Lance Corporal David L. Espinoza; Lance Corporal Jared M. Schmitz; Lance Corporal Rylee J. McCollum; Lance Corporal Dylan R. Merola; Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nikoui; and Navy Petty Officer Third Class Maxton W. Soviak. The president encouraged all Americans to remember their heroism and to stand with the Gold Star families who carry on their legacy.
The proclamation also lays out how the disaster unfolded. On July 2, 2021, the previous administration pulled American forces out of Bagram Airfield in the middle of the night without notifying Afghan security forces, surrendering the largest U.S. military base in the country and leaving behind billions of dollars in equipment. The Taliban quickly seized Bagram, emptied its prisons of thousands of terrorists and criminals, and swept into Kabul, leaving American troops to run a desperate evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport as the collapse unfolded around them.
President Trump was blunt about where the blame belongs, declaring that the withdrawal squandered 20 years of hard-fought gains and put politics over strategy. In the same proclamation, he noted with pride that his administration apprehended the ISIS-K terrorist responsible for the atrocity and brought him to face American justice.
The most explosive development on the anniversary came from Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson and chairman of the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel. In an update released Wednesday, Parnell revealed that investigators recently located highly relevant classified documents, material that should have been disclosed years ago, stashed and hidden away in safes where they would not be found.
Once the documents were reviewed, Parnell said, it became clear why someone had tried to hide them. He did not disclose the contents, but he made one promise: the families of the fallen are owed the full picture of what happened at Abbey Gate, and the panel intends to give it to them.
The revelation lands on top of long-simmering suspicions among Gold Star families that an earlier review of the withdrawal was a cover-up. A new, broader examination is now combing through millions of pages of records, and Gold Star parents have said publicly that the previous effort never passed the smell test. Parnell's message to the 13 and to every American who served in Afghanistan was simple: what they did mattered, and the way the war ended does not erase what they gave.
While the nation remembered the fallen, the man accused of carrying out the Abbey Gate bombing is standing trial, with parents of the dead and wounded survivors in the room. Their testimony has laid bare both the heroism of that day and the chaos surrounding it.
Marine Corporal Kelsee Lainhart, who was paralyzed in the blast, testified about the final moments she saw her friend Sergeant Nicole Gee alive. The two were bunkmates and confidantes assigned to search women and children at the airport. Lainhart had just escorted an Afghan woman and her two toddler sons away from the gate when the bomb went off. She initially thought Gee had been knocked unconscious; she woke up in the hospital to learn she would never walk again and that her friend was dead.
Survivors have also described how evacuation instructions from Washington changed multiple times a day, with people barred from leaving one day and cleared the next, leaving families to be seized by the Taliban while the bureaucracy dithered. The testimony paints a picture of troops left to make impossible life-and-death decisions with the hand they were dealt.
Congress is joining the push for accountability. Army aviator veteran Representative Matt Van Epps of Tennessee introduced a resolution marking the fifth anniversary, calling the Biden-Harris withdrawal an abject failure and arguing the Trump-era Doha agreement had built in conditions the Taliban and the Afghan government were required to meet. The Biden team, he said, ignored those accountability measures and was more interested in optics than operations.
Two documentaries released this week are also reopening the record. A Wall Street Journal film, The Path to Zero, walks through the final days of the war with the diplomats, generals, and soldiers who were there, while a Fox Nation documentary, Ambush at Abbey Gate, examines the mistakes that led to the bombing. The new films and the document review are feeding into a broader Pentagon effort that has promised to produce a sweeping account of the withdrawal.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth marked the anniversary with a pledge to the families: the memory of the thirteen will forever live in the heart of a grateful nation. With the review panel promising to share its findings with Gold Star families and the bomber's trial moving forward, the fifth anniversary of Abbey Gate is shaping up to be less a closing chapter than a reckoning. The names are being said again, the documents are being opened, and America is keeping its promise to the 13 and the families who carry them.
Five years after the Abbey Gate bombing killed 13 American heroes in Kabul, President Trump proclaims a day of remembrance as a Pentagon review panel uncovers hidden classified documents and the ISIS-K bomber faces American justice.
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