[ad_1]
WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan entered its final hours Monday with the last Americans seeking to be evacuated and the U.S. military preparing to end its airlift and depart the Taliban-controlled capital.
“Obviously we are reaching the end of our prescribed mission,” Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff told reporters, adding that details of the final evacuation movements were being kept secret for security reasons.
Speaking at the same news conference, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said it was not too late for any remaining Americans to get to the Kabul airport for evacuation flights.
“There is still time,” Kirby said.
Later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “a small number” of Americans were believed to still want to get out of the country. She did not offer an exact number but said about 6,000 had been evacuated by various means so far. She said some of the remaining Americans had not fully decided whether to leave.
The Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility for targeting the Kabul airport with rockets. The U.S. military reported no American casualties.
The focus of the U.S. evacuation was increasingly on getting the last Americans out. Senior administration officials said Sunday that the United States has the capacity to evacuate the approximately 300 U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan who want to leave before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline.
“This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission these last couple of days,” said America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The steady stream of U.S. military jets taking off and landing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan’s capital continued Monday even after rocket fire targeted the airport and rockets hit a nearby neighborhood. U.S. Central Command spokesman Bill Urban said five rockets targeted the airport and a U.S. defensive system on the airfield known as a Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System, or C-RAM, was employed against them. He said there were no U.S. casualties and the airfield continued to operate. Further details were not immediately available. The White House said Biden had been briefed on the rocket attack.
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday that for those U.S. citizens seeking immediately to leave Afghanistan by the looming deadline, “we have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining.”
The White House said Monday morning that about 1,200 people were evacuated from Kabul over the prior 24 hours aboard 26 U.S. military flights and two allied flights.
Sullivan said the U.S. does not currently plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the final U.S. troop withdrawal. But he pledged the U.S. “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident,” after Tuesday, as well as for “those Afghans who helped us.” But untold numbers of vulnerable Afghans, fearful of a return to the brutality of pre-2001 Taliban rule, are likely to be left behind.
Calling all HuffPost superfans!
Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter
Source link
[ad_2]
source https://earn8online.com/index.php/337506/u-s-prepares-to-end-airlift-operation-as-afghanistan-war-enters-final-hours/
No comments:
Post a Comment