US drone strike 'arbitrary', should have been reported to us: Taliban

Kabul, Aug 30: Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has condemned the United States drone strike targeting, a suspected suicide bomber in Kabul for failing to inform the Taliban before ordering the strike.

"If there was any potential threat in Afghanistan, it should have been reported to us, not an arbitrary attack that has resulted in civilian casualties," Mujahid told China's state television CGTN.

US military forces conducted a self-defence unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamid Karzai International airport.

Sunday's drone strike was the second by the US since the twin blasts at the Kabul airport that killed 169 Afghans and 13 American soldiers.

On Saturday, the US military said that it carried out a drone strike in Afghanistan, killing two high-profile "planners and facilitators" of the Islamic State''s Afghanistan affiliate, dubbed Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, which had claimed responsibility for the attack at the Kabul airport on Thursday.

"Two high-profile ISIS targets were killed, and one was wounded. And we know of zero civilian casualties," Maj Gen Hank Taylor, deputy director of the Joint Staff For Regional Operations, told reporters on Saturday.

Earlier, President Joe Biden had vowed to "hunt" down the terrorists and make them "pay" for the Kabul airport attack and ordered his commanders to develop plans to strike back at them.

"To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm notice, we will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command," Biden had said in his remarks at the White House on Thursday.

with PTI inputs