Trump slams 'horrible' Afghan withdrawal on 9/11 anniversary

Former US president Donald Trump on Saturday used the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to slam the "horrible" withdrawal from Afghanistan and the "incompetence" of Joe Biden's administration during the frenzied end to America's longest war.

"It's a horrible thing that took place, a horrible, horrible thing," Trump said in televised comments during a visit to the New York Police Department's 17th precinct.

"It looked like we retreated, it looked like we gave up. Like, they use the word surrender," he told officers at the precinct, referring to the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan last month following the Taliban takeover of the country. 

"And we didn't surrender, our people didn't surrender and our soldiers sure as hell didn't surrender," he said.

The US military intervention in Afghanistan began in late 2001 in the wake of Al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside the US capital.

Al-Qaeda had been sheltering in Taliban-held Afghanistan, and the US invasion toppled the extremist regime in a bid to find Al-Qaeda's leaders.

But the Taliban soon launched an insurgency and, after two decades of war, stormed back to power last...