On April 20, 2017, one week after the Nangarhar airstrike, Mattis told reporters that the US would not conduct a damage assessment "in terms of the number of people killed" in Afghanistan. Mattis traveled to Afghanistan days later and met with government officials, explaining that the purpose of the trip was to allow him to state his recommendations for US strategy in the country. On June 13, Mattis said US forces were "not winning" in Afghanistan and the administration would develop a new strategy by "mid-July" while speaking to the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services. On June 27 Mattis told reporters that he was creating a conflict-ending strategy for Afghanistan that would also "remove the danger to the Afghan people and to us and to all the nations that have been attacked by terrorist groups out of that region". On June 29 Mattis said the Obama administration "may have pulled our troops out too rapidly" and that he intended to submit a new Afghanistan strategy to Trump upon his return to Washington, D.C.