WASHINGTON, 05 October 2021, (TON): U.S. Marines who had been deployed to Afghanistan reached their home base on Sunday, hugging their families after the combat deaths of nine Marines from their battalion who failed to make it back.

Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines Regiment were on duty outside the Kabul airport on Aug. 26 when a suicide bomber detonated explosives, killing at least 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans.

Nine Marines from the so-called 2/1 and a Navy sailor also based at Camp Pendleton were among the 13 killed. Two additional Marines and an Army soldier also died.

The fallen belonged to a separate company from the 282 Marines who returned on Sunday to Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine base on the West Coast, about 40 miles (65 km) north of San Diego.

The Marine Corps did not give reporters full access to talk with returning Marines and their families, though some briefly spoke with the media.

“We came all the way from Mississippi to see him,” Allen Frazier, a retired Marine, said of his son, Corporal Jeffrey Frazier.