A special Hellfire missile – nicknamed "the flying Ginsu," which uses blades instead of explosives to limit damage – was deployed to strike ISIS-K targets in Afghanistan, officials told The Wall Street Journal.
The Pentagon reported two targets were killed and a third individual was injured, but it declined to release the names of them.
A Reaper drone, deployed from a location in the Persian Gulf, dropped the R9X missile in retaliation to this week's suicide bombing at the gate of the Kabul airport, which killed 13 U.S. service members and almost 200 Afghan civilians.
The R9X does not explode, instead releasing six large blades at the last second to shred the target of the strike, with the hope of minimizing civilian casualties.
A neighbor at the Nangarhar, Rahamunullah, strike site in eastern Afghanistan contradicted the Pentagon report on the number of deaths, claiming three people were killed and four others wounded, according to the Journal.
A video posted by the Journal showed the damage of the strike, including a small blast hole outside the home, a burnt rickshaw vehicle, windows blown out, walls marked by shrapnel, and belongings scattered around the home.
The R9X missile was a secret weapon until a Journal report in 2019, but the U.S. government still has not publicly acknowledged its existence.
The R9X has been reported to have been used to strike other al-Qaida and military targets in Yemen and Syria over the past few years.
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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