Since the collapse of Afghanistan, President Biden has saved a total of 2,500 Americans. Media reports suggest 7,500 to 40,000 Americans remind stranded.
Major General Hank Taylor said the total of Americans rescued was only 2,500 during Saturday’s Pentagon press conference all while the total evacuated is 15,000 as reported by CBS news. “That’s the race that we are in right now,” he added about the Taliban-enforced withdrawal deadline of August 31.
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During the press conference, Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby said he would not detail whether ISIS and Al-Qaeda are operating outside the gates at the Kabul airport.
“We’re not going to get into specific details about the threat environment,” he said. President Joe Biden claimed Friday Al-Qaeda was gone from Afghanistan; a statement fact-checked as false by Breitbart News.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is warning Americans not to travel to the airport “because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport.”
“We are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so,” the embassy said.
While the Taliban are reportedly threatening to shoot the evacuees, there are reports that all U.S. passports are confiscated. “Go back to your home, or I will shoot you,” a Taliban fighter told one man, “according to a person who witnessed the encounter.”
“I got to the gates and was about to show my passport, but the Taliban got it, and he said you are not allowed to go through and wouldn’t give it back,” one Afghan American on the ground told the New York Post. “I was lucky a U.S. marine was right there and forced him to give it back.”
The violence comes after President Biden claimed that to the “best of our knowledge – Taliban checkpoints – they are letting through people showing American passports.”
On Friday, Biden’s Defense Secretary contradicted his statement that Americans have not been abused and beaten on the ground.
On-ground reporting confirms the Taliban fighters are blocking “access” to the airport “with gunfire and violence.” The Taliban attacked CNN’s camera crew in another report.
“It’s definitely chaotic,” an on-the-ground reporter tweeted. “It’s definitely dangerous.”