A Florida restaurant owner put a sign outside of her business telling supporters of President Joe Biden not to enter.
Angie Ugarte, the owner of DeBary Diner, posted the sign that criticizes the way Biden handled evacuations in Afghanistan, where a blast last week killed 13 U.S. service members.
“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, please take your business elsewhere,” the sign says. “God bless America and God bless our soldiers.”
“It was the only thing I felt like I could do,” Ugarte said, according to FOX 35 News. “I was just angry. I was just let down. I felt like one of those mothers, or wives, or sisters who were gonna get that knock on the door.”
Some customers turn and walk away when they see the sign, while others have praised the sign’s message, Ugarte explained.
Ugarte has a wall in her restaurant dedicated to “Our Local Heroes” with pictures of service members along with U.S. and military decor.
At least 13 US soldiers were among scores of people killed in two attacks at Kabul’s airport in Afghanistan. An attack which has been linked by ISIS-K.
More than 70 Afghans, including 28 Taliban members, were counted among the dead after the twin bombings and shootings that were claimed by ISIL, Taliban and hospital sources tsaid.
It is believed to be the most US troops killed in Afghanistan in a single incident since 30 personnel died when a helicopter was shot down in August 2011.
“A thirteenth US service member has died from his wounds suffered as a result of the attack on Abbey Gate,” Central Command spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement.
Two US officials later told The Associated Press that of the 12 initially killed, 11 were Marines and one a Navy medic.
The US military casualties are the first American deaths from hostile action since February 2020 when two Army special forces soldiers were killed in an green-on-blue insider attack by an Afghan soldier.
Eleven US service members were killed in 2020 and 24 in 2019 bringing the total of US military fatalities in Afghanistan to 2,218 since the US invaded after the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks, according to the Defense Department.
More than 71,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 Afghan military and police forces have been killed in the war, according to Brown University and the Brookings Institution, which have tracked the data.
The apparent suicide vest attack occurred at the Abbey Gate to the airport where US forces were screening Afghan civilians for admission to the airport, McKenzie said.
Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie Jr, said “ISIS gunmen” also had opened fire on the crowds and US forces after the bomb detonated.
Two bombs were detonated by apparent suicide bombers near the Abbey Gate to the airport where Afghans were lining up to enter the US-secured airport. The second bomb was close to the Baron Hotel where many British citizens had been awaiting evacuation.
“The impact of these blasts has been huge,” said Rossella Miccio, president of Emergency, a non-governmental medical aid group.
Emergency workers had received about 60 wounded Afghan civilians with multiple injuries of shattered limbs, fractured bones and projectile wounds and six dead, Miccio told Al Jazeera.
Responsibility for the bombings initially was being attributed to an ISIS (ISIL) group affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), which grew out of disaffected Taliban members who hold harder-line views, an unnamed US official told The Associated Press.
“If we can find who is associated with this we will go after them,” McKenzie said.
“We are working very hard right now to find who’s associated with this.”
ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack on a website, according to AFP news service and in an Arabic language telegram channel reviewed by Al Jazeera identified the bomber by name.
Others cautioned against drawing conclusions about the source of the attacks.
“While it is too early to draw any conclusions about those responsible, ISIS-K had a clear motivation to disrupt our efforts to evacuate many tens of thousands of people,” Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said in a statement earlier in the day.
