Biden to address the nation Tuesday on Afghanistan withdrawal
The Pentagon on Monday warned that there is still an "active threat" in Kabul that "remains high and remains real," while confirming that U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline.
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Taliban fighters from the Fateh Zwak unit, wielding American supplied weapons, equipment and uniforms, storm into the Kabul International Airport to secure the airport and inspect the equipment that was left behind.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken pledged ongoing support to what he described as the "small number of Americans" still in Afghanistan after the last U.S. troops departed the country on Monday.
Blinken said the State Department does not have an exact figure on the number of Americans still in the country, though it is believed to be "under 200 and likely closer to 100." He added that efforts to determine an exact number were complicated by "longtime residents of Afghanistan who have American passports and are trying to determine whether or not they want to leave."
"Our commitment to them, and to all Americans in Afghanistan and everywhere in the world, continues. The protection and welfare of Americans abroad remains the State Department’s most vital and enduring mission," Blinken said. "If an American in Afghanistan tells us that they want to stay for now and then in a week or a month or a year they reach out and say, ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ we will help them leave."
The last U.S. warplane carrying American troops left Afghanistan Monday after 20 years, and retired U.S. Navy SEAL Jocko Willink reminded host Dan Bongino on Fox Nation’s "The Dan Bongino Show" how America should always respect those in harm’s way.
Willink: I was going to bring this up the other night. I heard you, before I came on, I heard you talking and you were talking about the fact that we were leaving people behind. And I wanted to mention this story. When I was in Iraq, I was in the battle of Ramadi, and there was a situation where there was a gunfight and there were some Iraqi soldiers, some friendly Iraqi soldiers got wounded and were laying in the street. And two of my guys, two American SEALs, put down cover fire, ran out into the middle of the street during a gunfight to grab these two guys, bring them back to safety, totally put their lives at risk. Both those guys ended up receiving the Silver Star for that action.
CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said the Taliban were "helpful and useful when we closed down operations."
"They established a firm perimeter outside of the airfield to prevent people from coming on the airfield during our departure," McKenzie said of the Taliban Monday. "They did not have direct knowledge of our time of departure, we chose to keep that information very restricted. But they were actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations."
President Joe Biden
President Biden issued a statement promising to address the American people on his decision not to extend evacuations from Kabul past the Aug. 31 deadline.
"Tomorrow afternoon, I will address the American people on my decision not to extend our presence in Afghanistan beyond 8/31," Biden said in the statement. "For now, I will report that it was the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all of our commanders on the ground to end our airlift mission as planned. Their view was that ending our military mission was the best way to protect the lives of our troops, and secure the prospects of civilian departures for those who want to leave Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead."
"I want to thank our commanders and the men and women serving under them for their execution of the dangerous retrograde from Afghanistan as scheduled – in the early morning hours of August 31st, Kabul time – with no further loss of American lives," Biden said. "The past 17 days have seen our troops execute the largest airlift in US history, evacuating over 120,000 US citizens, citizens of our allies, and Afghan allies of the United States. They have done it with unmatched courage, professionalism, and resolve. Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended."
President Biden appears to have broken his promise to stay in Afghanistan until every American is evacuated.
Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. announced Monday evening that the last of the U.S. troops stationed at the Kabul airport had left, completing the military’s drawdown in the country, even though hundreds of Americans likely remain.
McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said some American citizens who wanted to leave Afghanistan remain in country.
The official Twitter account of the Taliban in Afghanistan celebrated the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Kabul in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Afghanistan time.
"The last American soldier left Kabul airport at 9pm Afghan time tonight and our country gained full independence. Thank God and blessings," the Taliban account tweeted.
CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said the Taliban were “helpful and useful when we closed down operations."
McKenzie said Taliban were not made aware of exactly when the last U.S. forces would leave.
“They did not have direct knowledge,” of our departure McKenzie said.
The general added that the ISIS threat to the operation remained “very real” until the end.
“Overwhelming” U.S. air power was overhead during the final days of the evacuation.
No U.S. citizens were aboard the finial five military flights leaving Kabul, according to CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie.
McKenzie said the last U.S. citizens to left 12 hours before the final five military flights.
The U.S. left behind the C-RAM (counter-artillery, artillery and mortar) system that was used to shoot down rockets, dozens of armored Humvees and some aircraft. McKenzie said all of the equipment was no longer mission capable.
McKenzie said the Taliban had been “business-like” during the U.S. evacuation effort.
“There was no discussion of turning anything over” to the Taliban, McKenzie said.
A former U.S. Army Green Beret-turned social studies teacher who is helping facilitate evacuations from Afghanistan told Fox News on Monday that he and other special forces personnel are "playing the long game" and "are not leaving [anyone] behind" as the Aug. 31 deadline for American troops to leave the country is now only hours away.
Zac Lois and other American veterans have banded together as Task Force Pineapple, establishing a "Pineapple Express" pipeline to Kabul’s airport and other parts of the country that he says has brought more than 1,000 people to safety, including American citizens, Afghan special forces soldiers and government officials, and other foreign nationals.
"We have developed kind of an underground railroad, we have shepherds that guide flocks... its special operations personnel coaching, teaching, guiding and advising in most cases our brothers that we served with," Lois, who teaches eighth-graders in Syracuse, N.Y., told Fox News. "The U.S. government is sending us people as well that need help getting out, so we are in coordination and we are working with the U.S. government."
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, is investigating reports that buses of Americans were turned away from the Kabul airport as they tried to evacuate the country last week.
Johnson sent a letter on Friday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin regarding "troubling" news reports that "contradict the Biden administration’s narrative" on their botched troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The senator pointed at allegations that buses full of American evacuees were turned away from the Kabul airport in the early morning last Thursday.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., slammed President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on "The Faulkner Focus" Monday, warning the policy on Afghanistan will likely lead to "another Syria" in the Middle East. McCarthy asked whether prisoners released in Afghanistan were involved in the attack that killed 13 U.S. service members in Kabul.
KEVIN MCCARTHY: This is the accountability that we need. This is why Congress should be in session. This is the information we should have and wherever this information takes us, that is when we should take our action about people resigning and others. Because you now have an administration made up of individuals that brought us Syria that is now creating another Syria in the Middle East.
A Senior State Department official told Fox News that there is “still a small number” of Americans who remain in Afghanistan who want to leave the country.
The official said the number is “below 250,” noting that some of them have left the country in recent hours.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the U.S. will make sure terror threats do not emerge out of Afghanistan in the future.
"We are not going to do anything that's going to allow terrorists to grow or prosper in Afghanistan," Psaki said when asked if if the country is "more or less safe today than we were before the Taliban took over."
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said there were still a "small number" of Americans that are left in Afghanistan as the deadline to leave the country passes.
Psaki did not provide a specific estimate of how many Americans remain in the country.
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Taliban fighters took the Afghan capital city of Kabul faster than anyone anticipated earlier this month – including the Taliban – but according to a Washington Post report, the U.S. had an opportunity to hold the city only to willingly turn it over.
When Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the city began to collapse as gangs were reported to be taking over. This led to U.S. military leaders meeting and reaching an agreement with the Taliban, a U.S. official told the Post.
"We have two options to deal with it," Taliban political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar reportedly said, according to the official. "You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it."
Faced with the decision of whether to accept control over Kabul or allow the Taliban to do so, the U.S. opted for the latter, given President Biden’s insistence on withdrawing from Afghanistan by August 31. As part of the agreement, the U.S. assumed control of Kabul’s airport until the end of the month to facilitate its exit while the Taliban ruled the city.
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The father of one of the 13 American service members killed in the Kabul terror attacks in Afghanistan spoke out on Monday just one day after his son’s body was returned to U.S. soil.
31-year-old Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin "Taylor" Hoover, who was the oldest U.S. service member killed in the August 26 Kabul attack, was serving his third tour in Afghanistan at the time of his death. The suicide bombing killed 10 Marines.
"That kid had the biggest heart in the world," said Darin Hoover, who shares the same name as his late son.
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The Pentagon on Monday did not dispute that civilian casualties might have resulted from Sunday's U.S. drone strike on ISIS-K suicide bombers before they could attack the ongoing military evacuation at Kabul's airport, saying the strike was to protect against a "very imminent threat."
The Taliban claimed that the airstrike killed at least 10 people, including civilians and three children.
When asked about potential civilian casualties Monday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the military is "not in a position to dispute it right now," but noted that they are "assessing" and "investigating."
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The Pentagon on Monday warned that there is still an "active threat" in Kabul that "remains high and remains real," while confirming that U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline.
Biden, over the weekend, warned that another terrorist attack in Afghanistan is "highly likely" – a sentiment echoed by the Pentagon during a press briefing on Monday.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that there is an "active threat in various ways that we have to be prepared for."
Kirby added that the U.S. military has and "will continue to have and will maintain the capability to protect ourselves and defend ourselves as we complete the retrograde."
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Pentagon press secretary John Kirby tells Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin that one of the rockets fired at Kabul airport in an attack last night “landed inside the perimeter and had no effect whatsoever [on the mission].”
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Tuesday at 3:29 p.m. ET (11:59 p.m. local in Kabul) is the deadline for all U.S. troops and diplomats to be out of Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials tell Fox News.
The plan, as it stands now, is for all Americans to be out of Kabul by the end of President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline.
It will mark the first time in nearly 20 years that no U.S. troops will be on the ground in Afghanistan.
Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret commander, discusses his mission to rescue people from Afghanistan.
U.S. evacuation flights of Americans and vulnerable Afghans continue out of Kabul, but at a reduced pace, one day ahead of President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal.
It is not accurate to say U.S. evacuation flights “have ended,” officials tell Fox News.
A White House official said Monday that around 1,200 people have been evacuated from Kabul between 3 a.m. ET Sunday and the same time this morning.
The evacuees fled Afghanistan on 26 U.S. military and two coalition flights.
Since Aug. 14, the U.S. has now evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of around 116,700 people, the official added.
The U.S. Marines took to Twitter late Sunday to post a photo of the flag-draped transfer cases of the fallen service members who died last week during the bombing in Kabul.
The cases were inside a C-17 Globemaster II and the photo was taken on Aug. 29. The bodies were headed to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
"Gone, but never forgotten," read the caption.
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Five rockets were fired early Monday at the Kabul airport and intercepted by a U.S. C-RAM missile defense system, a defense official told Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin.
U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to an email from Fox News for additional details.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a press release that President Bide has been informed about the development by his top aides-- Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, and Ron Klain, his chief of staff.
The U.S. Marine relieved of his command for calling out his superiors over the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that led to the deaths of 13 service members said Sunday he was officially resigning.
In a tell-all video posted on social media, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller acknowledged he was sacrificing a comfortable retirement by criticizing the way the withdrawal was handled.
"I could stay in the Marine Corps for another three years, but I don’t think that’s the path I’m on. I’m resigning my commission as a United States Marine, effective now," Scheller said. "I am forfeiting retirements, all entitlements, I don’t want a single dollar. I don’t want any money from the VA. I don’t want any VA benefits [even though] I’m sure I’m entitled 100%."
U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Bill Urban released a statement regarding the potential civilian casualties after a U.S. drone strike on ISIS-K targets.
"We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul today," Urban said.
"We are still assessing the results of this strike, which we know disrupted an imminent ISIS-K threat to the airport. We know that there were substantial and powerful subsequent explosions resulting from the destruction of the vehicle, indicating a large amount of explosive material inside that may have caused additional casualties. It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further," the statement continued.
"We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life."
President Joe Biden
Conservatives and veterans attacked President Biden for appearing to look at his watch during a memorial service for the 13 U.S. service members killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing near the Kabul airport in Afghanistan last week.
Biden met with the families of the troops killed in the attack, and he also attended the "dignified transfer" of the fallen troops, a military ritual of receiving the remains of those killed in foreign combat, while at Dover Air Force Base.
During the event, Biden appeared to look down at his watch, sparking criticism from conservatives.
Secretary of education under President Obama, Arne Duncan, set social media ablaze on Sunday after he likened anti-maskers and those who oppose the COVID-19 vaccine to the radical Islamic suicide bombers who killed U.S. service members at the Kabul airport last week.
"Have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and actions between the suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport, and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here?" Duncan wrote on Twitter. "They both blow themselves up, inflict harm on those around them, and are convinced they are fighting for freedom."
CNN anchor Jim Acosta encouraged CNN viewers on Saturday to set aside politics and offer "thoughts and prayers" for tragedies that are unfolding in Afghanistan. But the CNN anchor was quickly reminded of the times he criticized others for offering "thoughts and prayers" and didn't set aside politics.
On Twitter, Acosta shared his report from "CNN Newsroom" where he slammed Republicans for "exploiting" the Kabul airport attack.
"My thoughts on Afghanistan this week... now is not the time to score political points. Just imagine just this once if we simply offered our thoughts and prayers. Give it some thought. Pray on it," he said.
There may have been some civilian casualties as a result of the secondary explosion when the U.S. drone struck the vehicle which had explosives inside, according to Fox News National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin.
The explosion took place in a crowded Kabul neighborhood 3 km from Kabul Airport.
Sen. Bill Hagerty tweeted about his conversation with Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss's family.
“I had the privilege of personally speaking with the late Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss’s family today. I humbly thanked them for their sacrifice, and their son’s unyielding courage for the country he loved. They are overwhelmed by the support, and incredibly proud of Ryan, his service, and the person he had become. They spoke of his spirit, and I told them the people of Tennessee and this country will never forget him. May God bring comfort and peace to the Knauss family.” – Senator Bill Hagerty
Gen. Jack Keane discussed the "common ideology" of the Taliban, ISIS-K, and al Qaeda on "Fox & Friends Weekend," concluding they are likely "complicit" in their anti-Americanism in Afghanistan.
GEN. JACK KEANE: There's no doubt that ISIS-K has operating cells in Kabul and certainly they're trying to pull off another attack before we get out of there. Certainly we're taking all necessary precautions we possibly can, but we are vulnerable, as you have noted on the show this morning. We have outsourced the security outside the perimeter, outside the Kabul airport to the Taliban. They're running the security checkpoints.
President Biden blew off a question about Afghanistan after offering to take questions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington on Sunday.
Biden was at FEMA to address the response to Hurricane Ida, which strengthened to a Category 4 before making landfall in Louisiana earlier Sunday.
"I’m not supposed to take any questions but go ahead," Biden told Bloomberg News reporter Jennifer Jacobs.
Sen. Lindsey Graham
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asserted Sunday that not only is the war in Afghanistan not ending with the Aug. 31 U.S. withdrawal, it is only going to get worse.
After a suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul killed 13 American service members, Graham warned of "the parade of horribles that are about to unfold" as a result of President Biden’s decisions.
"President Biden said that he wanted to take this, Afghanistan, off the plate for future presidents. He’s done the exact opposite," Graham told CBS’ "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "For the next 20 years, American presidents will be dealing with this catastrophe in Afghanistan. This war has not ended, we’ve entered into a new deadly chapter. Terrorists are now in charge of Afghanistan."
Roya Rahmani, who served as the first female Afghanistan ambassador to the United States until last month, said Afghan women are "in a state of panic" after the Taliban retook the country two weeks ago.
"What we are hearing is that the sense of panic is growing exponentially, because there [are] multiple threats that the Afghans are facing, particularly Afghan women and Afghan girls. They are the ones that will be losing the most," Rahmani told another network.
ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl questioned the Biden administration's description of the evacuation effort in Afghanistan as a "success," arguing their statements are not based in reality.
President Joe Biden and his national security advisers were initially defensive about both the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the effort to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from the Kabul airport. In his interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Biden suggested that Afghanistan would have descended into chaos regardless of how or when they proceeded. Commenting on the U.S. airlift last week, which was one of the largest in U.S. history, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told Fox News' Peter Doocy that the administration would not call it "anything but a success."
However, after last Thursday's suicide bombings, which took the lives of 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghan citizens, ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz asked her Sunday panel whether the White House can still stand behind such statements.
The American drone strike that killed an ISIS-K planner following the deadly attack on American forces in Kabul took place 3 kilometers from the airport where thousands are attempting to evacuate the country, a defense official told Fox News.
Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin noted that such strikes must originate at a U.S. base in UAE, which is about an eight hour flight to Kabul. The drone can hover over a target for 4-5 hours before needing to return to base.
"2 people were in the vehicle packed with explosives, the vehicle targeted by the US drone was parked when the drone struck. Airstrike occurred about 3 km from the Kabul Airport. The drone flew out of UAE," a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was vacationing in the Hamptons just hours before Taliban insurgents invaded Kabul and completed their retaking of Afghanistan 20 years after their ouster by U.S.-led forces, according to a new report.
According to a detailed timeline of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul compiled by The Washington Post, the actions by U.S. officials in the days leading up to the collapse suggested "no immediate cause for alarm," with many of them "surrendering to the customary rhythms of Washington in August."
President Biden stands at attention at Dover Air Force Base as the military transfers the bodies of soldiers killed in Kabul last week.
A military official told Fox News that a vehicle-born improvised explosive device (IED) posed an "imminent threat" to the airport. The U.S. military acted to intervene and prevent another event like the one that occurred Thursday last week when a suicide bomb killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghan citizens.
The strike in a crowded neighborhood northwest of the airport set off "significant secondary explosions," which indicated a "substantial amount of explosive material" inside the vehicle, Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command said in a statement. While the target was initially described as a vehicle-born improvised explosive device (IED), an official clarified that the explosives may have been worn by one or more bombers inside, rather than planted on the vehicle itself.
Urban added that the military is assessing the possibility of civilian casualties, though there is no indication at the time.
Smoke rises after an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 29, 2021. (Photo by Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the military carried out an airstrike against a vehicle-born IED in a Kabul neighborhood.
A rocket struck a neighborhood just northwest of Kabul’s international airport Sunday as the U.S. evacuation there winds down following the Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country, killing a child, an Afghan police chief told the Associated Press.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a message to journalists that the strike targeted the bomber as he drove a vehicle loaded with explosives. Mujahid offered few other details.
Fox News' Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
New reports have emerged of an explosion in Kabul, though, the explosion is reportedly not near the Kabul Airport, according to Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin.
The explosion supposedly occurred at a residential home, and it may be the result of a rocket.
No casualties have yet been confirmed.
President Biden and First Lady Joe Biden at Joint Base Andrews ahead of departure to Dover Air Force Base for dignified transfer of fallen American service members.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Dover, Delaware Sunday morning to receive the bodies of fallen American service members from Kabul.
The president will also meet with the families of the fallen. The dignified transfer of the bodies will occur at noon, after which the president and first lady will return to the White House.
The meeting will closed to the public, but the transfer will be covered by the press pool.
New numbers from the White House show the evacuation effort continues in full force as the Aug. 31 deadline draws ever closer.
From Aug. 28 to Aug. 29, the U.S. military completed 32 flights that carried approximately 2,200 evacuees and 9 coalition flights that carried 700 people.
This brings the total number of evacuated people to approximately 114,000 in the past two weeks.
Two Paralympic athletes from Afghanistan -- Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli – arrived in Tokyo to compete in the Games Saturday evening.
The specifics of how the pair got out of Kabul weren’t disclosed but several governments and other agencies helped, International Paralympic Committee spokesperson Craig Spence said.
“This is a really complex situation, one of the most complex we’ve ever been involved in," Spence said in a briefing Sunday. "So what we can say is limited. Human life is the most important thing here. Having the athletes here isn’t about getting media coverage. It’s about these athletes fulfilling their dream of being able to attend the Paralympic Games.”
It's unclear where the athletes will go once the Games are over.
A group of veteran regional Afghan leaders against Taliban rule in Afghanistan plan to form a united front in the coming weeks in an effort to negotiate with the Islamist group, which took over the country earlier this month, according to a report.
“We prefer to negotiate collectively, because it is not that the problem of Afghanistan will be solved just by one of us,” Khalid Noor, a prominent politician and the son of a former governor of the country's Balkh province, told Reuters. “So, it is important for the entire political community of the country to be involved, especially the traditional leaders, those with power, with public support."
Noor said while the Taliban took the country by force they wouldn’t be able to have a long rule without consensus from the country’s ethnicities.
“The Taliban at this point are very, very arrogant, because they just won militarily,” Noor told Reuters.
President Joe Biden arrives to attend a FEMA briefing on Hurricane Ida in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
After ISIS-K took credit for the deadly suicide bombings at the Kabul airport on Thursday that left 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans dead, the U.S. launched a retaliatory strike.
On Saturday, Biden promised to continue the strikes.
“This strike was not the last,” Biden said in a statement. “We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”
With U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan lasting two decades, four presidents share at least some portion of the blame for last week’s deadly Kabul disaster, a retired Army general says.
But one of those presidents – Barack Obama – missed a "time to transition" out of the Asian nation nearly a decade ago, thus extending U.S. troops’ time in the country for another 10 years, retired Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard says.
Afghanistan was "the place where al Qaeda made the plan to hit America and the Twin Towers. We went in there for the right reasons," Pittard recalled last week in an interview with Border Report, just two weeks before the U.S. marks 20 years since terror attacks ended some 3,000 lives in New York City, the Washington, D.C., area and a field in western Pennsylvania.
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A terror attack outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan left 11 Marines, one Army soldier and a Navy corpsman dead Thursday, injuring 20 more service members and inflicting even more carnage on Afghan civilians.
The service members were holding the airport as the Biden administration rushes to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from the country following a swift Taliban offensive reclaimed the country.
The ISIS-K terror group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing seeking to disrupt the massive evacuation effort of Americans, Afghan allies and third-party nationals outside the U.S.-held airport.
Here are the men and women who gave their lives in support of a massive evacuation effort to save U.S. citizens and Afghan allies:
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The U.S. embassy in Afghanistan warned early Sunday that "Due to a specific, credible threat, all U.S. citizens in the vicinity of Kabul airport (HKIA), including the South (Airport Circle) gate, the new Ministry of the Interior, and the gate near the Panjshir Petrol station on the northwest side of the airport, should leave the airport area immediately."
The warning comes just days after suicide bombings left 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans dead.
The Pentagon said the remaining contingent of U.S. forces at the airport, now numbering fewer than 4,000, had begun their final withdrawal ahead of Biden's deadline for ending the evacuation on Tuesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Radicalized terrorist sympathizers "already in our country" pose a "bigger problem" for the U.S. than any security issues at the U.S.-Mexico border, a retired U.S. Army general says.
Retired Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, a former commanding general at Fort Bliss in Texas, shared his observations last week in an interview with Border Report, after bombings at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan killed at least 13 U.S. service members as well as scores of Afghan civilians.
Pittard doesn’t just know about conditions at Fort Bliss, he also knows about fighting terrorists in combat: After leaving Fort Bliss in 2013, Pittard led U.S. troops against ISIS fighters in Iraq in 2014, according to Border Report.
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