Testimony from US Marines casts doubt on Pentagon's account of Kabul airport attack aftermath

Newly released testimony from US military survivors of the August 26 attack at Kabul airport has cast doubt on the findings of the Pentagon's investigation into the incident, which concluded that nobody was hit by gunfire in its aftermath.

The testimony also adds to some of the questions raised in this week's CNN investigation, in which Afghan survivors recalled seeing people shot in front of them. Afghan medical staff in five hospitals also reported seeing gunshot wounds in the dead and wounded, and one doctor recalled removing bullets from four patients. The Pentagon had dismissed the Afghan accounts as the result of memories jumbled by the impact of the blast, or, in the case of the medical diagnoses, the result of inadequate examinations. The investigators have nonetheless accepted they did not speak to any Afghan civilians.

The testimony comes in nearly 2,000 pages from the US military investigation that were released by US Central Command under a Freedom of Information Act Request from the Washington Post on Friday night. Most of the names of interviewees are redacted, making it hard to discern who each witness is. Yet from the details that remain it is clear numerous Marines reported shooting in excess of the three bursts of warning shots the US military investigation has stated were fired by US and UK troops, and did not harm anyone.