KABUL, AFGHANISTAN. (THECOUNT) — Marine Corps Corporal Hunter Lopez, of Coachella Valley, Palm Desert, California, has been identified as one of 13 U.S. service members killed Thursday in the Kabul airport attack Thursday.
Lopez, 22, died during a suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan during the U.S. lead evacuation effort.
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Hunter was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines with the U.S. Marine Corps. He was 22 at the time of his death.
Kareem Nikoui has been identified as the California Marine killed in the Thursday Kabul airport bombing.
Nikoui was stationed at Camp Pendleton.
“I haven’t gone to bed all night,” said the soldier’s heartbroken father.
“I’m still in shock. I haven’t been able to grasp everything that’s going on.”
He said his son “loved what he was doing” and “always wanted to be a Marine.”
Ahead of his deployment to Afghanistan, Kareem Nikoui was stationed nearby at Camp Pendleton and often visited home on the weekends, bringing along “10 or 15 other Marines” with him, reports NYPost.
“He really loved that [Marine Corps] family. He was devoted — he was going to make a career out of this, and he wanted to go. No hesitation for him to be called to duty,” the dad said.
“My wife and I felt very honored that [since] these other boys weren’t around their homes, that we were able to provide some sort of family life for them,” he said.
The father criticized President Biden’s sloppy withdrawal from Afghanistan and said he didn’t expect his son to be in this situation.
“They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security,” Steve Nikoui said.
“I blame my own military leaders… Biden turned his back on him. That’s it.”
Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, of Wentzville, Missouri, has been identified as one of over a dozen soldiers killed in a Thursday suicide airport bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Mark Schmitz, the father of 20-year-old Jared Schmitz, told a radio station the marines notified his family about 2:40 a.m. about his son’s death.
Schmitz was deployed to Afghanistan from Jordan. This was his first deployment.
Schmitz father told KMOX his son always wanted to be a soldier.
“His life meant so much more. I’m so incredibly devastated that I won’t be able to see the man that he was very quickly growing into becoming,” Mark Schmitz told the radio station.
Maxton William Soviak, of Berlin Heights, Ohio, Maxton William Soviak, of Berlin Heights, Ohio, was identified as another soldier killed in the bombing.
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Geo quick facts: Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in South-Central Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east; Iran in the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north; and in the far northeast, China – Wikipedia.