Heart wrenching details of some of the 13 US troops killed in Afghan bombings

Ten Marines and at least one Navy hospital corpsman are among the 13 US troops dead following a suicide bomb attack on crowds struggling to get out of Kabul.

As per USNI, 18 US service members were wounded and an unknown number of Afghans were killed and wounded in an attack, which is believed to have been perpetrated by ISIS Khorasan.

US Central Command chief Gen. Frank McKenzie told reporters, "The attack on the Abbey gate was followed by a number of ISIS gunmen, who opened fire on civilians and military forces,” McKenzie said. “A number of Afghan civilians were also killed and injured in the attack. We are treating some of them aboard HKIA. Many other Afghan civilians have been taken out to hospitals in town. We’re still working to calculate the total losses. We just don’t know it – what that is right now".

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Heart wrenching details began emerging Friday about some of the 13 US troops killed in a horrific suicide bombing.

A young husband with a child on the way, another man who always wanted to be in the military, a man who planned to become a sheriff’s deputy when his deployment ended, were amongst the few who sacrificed their lives.

Rylee McCollum, a Marine and native of Bondurant, Wyoming, was married and his wife is expecting a baby in three weeks, his sister, Cheyenne McCollum, said.

“He was so excited to be a dad, and he was going to be a great dad," McCollum was quoted by the Associated Press.

She said her brother “was a Marine before he knew he was allowed to be a Marine ... He’d carry around his toy rifle and wear his sister’s pink princess snow boots and he’d either be hunting or he was a Marine. Sometimes it would be with nothing on underneath, just a T-shirt.”

“We want to make sure that people know that these are the kids that are sacrificing themselves, and he’s got a family who loves him and a wife who loves him and a baby that he’ll never get to meet,” Cheyenne McCollum said.

Another man, Lance Corporal Kareem Mae’Lee Grant Nikoui, of Norco, California, sent videos to his family hours before he died.

In the video, he showed himself interacting with children in Afghanistan. In one of the clips, he asked a young boy to say hello.
“Want to take a video together buddy?” Nikoui said, leaning in to take a video of himself with the boy. “All right, we’re heroes now, man.”

Close family friend Paul Arreola said the videos show "the heart of this young man, the love he has.”

“The family is just heartbroken," he said. Arreola described Nikoui as an “amazing young man” full of promise who always wanted to be a Marine and set out to achieve his goal.

Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz grew up in the St. Louis area and was among a group of Marines sent back to Afghanistan to assist with evacuation efforts, his father, Mark Schmitz, told KMOX Radio.

Mark Schmitz said, “This was something he always wanted to do, and I never seen a young man train as hard as he did to be the best soldier he could be,” Schmitz said of his son. “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.”

Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, of Utah, had been in the Marines for 11 years. Speaking to the Associated Press, his father Darin Hoover said, "He is a hero. He gave his life protecting those that can’t protect themselves, doing what he loved serving his country".