Evacuation flights from Kabul are back on — just a day after a suicide bombing killed 13 American service members and dozens of Afghans. 

But for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Afghans, the window for getting airlifted to safety is quickly closing. 

"It is not possible for our family to make it to the airport, and now the situation is really scary," said former interpreter Hadi Zalmay.

As days are becoming just hours away from the deadline for the United States withdrawal, Afghan interpreters told Newsy they are feeling increasingly hopeless.  

Another former interpreter, Abdul, said, "Today I tried all of the airport gates and all of the gates were closed and the main road was blocked."

Even those brave enough to try another trip to the airport face a grim reality. 

"The Taliban are beating us," Abdul said. "They are not letting us inside the airport."

The threat level remains high. President Biden's national security team warned him on Friday that another terror attack in Kabul is likely. 

"The threat is ongoing and it is active," said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. "Our troops are in danger and that continues to be the case every day that they are there."

The White House said Friday that over 12,000 people had been airlifted over the previous 24 hours — despite the attacks.  

Sources confirmed to Newsy that some evacuees are now being escorted in by bus or helicopter because of continued terrorism threats.    

But for Afghan allies left behind, it all feels unfair. 

"Who are these people in the buses? Who are they, where are they going? We don't have any information," Abdul said. "Please. Help us, please."

The U.S. says coalition forces have evacuated more than 100,000 people since Aug. 14 in one of the largest airlift operations ever.   

But rights groups estimate that twice as many Afghans who may be eligible for expedited American visas remain in Afghanistan.   

"I don't know what happens to our case or what will happen to us, to our future, our life, to our kids," Zalmay said. 

Outside of Kabul, thousands of Afghans have been fleeing by land to Pakistan and Iran these past couple of weeks. 

The United Nations says up to half a million people could flee in a "worst-case scenario" in the coming months. 

This story was originally reported by Ben Schamisso on Newsy.com.

President Joe Biden was facing growing pressure from top U.S. allies Tuesday to extend a deadline for exiting Afghanistan in one week, as foreign evacuation missions ramp up against the backdrop of harrowing reports of Taliban executions.

Leaders of the Group of 7 will meet in a virtual gathering on Tuesday, the first such international forum since the crisis in Afghanistan unfolded. With the Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan fast approaching, America's allies are expected to press Biden to extend the military deployment.

Biden has so far not publicly committed to such a move, worrying some allies who fear there won't be enough time to get their citizens, along with Afghan allies who assisted in the war effort, out of the country by the end of the month.

The U.S. evacuated a record 12,700 people from Kabul airport between Monday and Tuesday morning, according to a White House official, and another 8,900 people were evacuated by 57 coalition flights. The U.S. has now evacuated some 58,700 people from Afghanistan since Aug. 14.

The U.S. military has advised Biden that he must decide by Tuesday whether to extend the evacuation beyond Aug. 31, according to a defense official directly familiar with the discussions, though Biden has yet to make a decision.

Speaking ahead of the G7 meeting Tuesday, U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News he thought it was "unlikely" Biden would extend the deadline date, though he added "it is definitely worth a try, and we will."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Monday that more time was needed. "We are concerned about the deadline set by the United States on Aug. 31. Additional time is needed to complete ongoing operations," he told AFP.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas advocated for negotiating with the Taliban on the deadline. "As bitter as it is, we need to talk to the Taliban," Maas said in a tweet. "The alternative would be to abandon these people. And we are not willing to do that."

But the Taliban has described Aug. 31 as a "red line" and threatened consequences if the White House moves to delay the U.S. withdrawal.

"It's a red line. President Biden announced that on 31 August they would withdraw all their military forces. So if they extend it that means they are extending occupation while there is no need for that," spokesman Sohail Shaheen told Sky News. "If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time to continue evacuations — the answer is no. Or there would be consequences. It will create mistrust between us. If they are intent on continuing the occupation it will provoke a reaction."

U.S. military advisers have told the White House that the decision must be made by Tuesday in order to have enough time to withdraw the 5,800 troops currently on the ground, as well as their equipment and weapons. If the president sticks to the Aug. 31 deadline, the military anticipates "a few more days" of trying to evacuate as many people as possible before the drawdown of U.S. forces begins, possibly at the end of this week.

Several of Biden's advisers have advised against an extension, citing the security situation on the ground, CNN has learned.

US evacuates record number from airport

The number of evacuees in and around Kabul airport swelled to around 20,000 over the weekend. But the pace of airlifts has sharply picked up in recent days, and as of Tuesday afternoon there were 4,671 people awaiting flights, Lieutenant Colonel Brett Lea told CNN.

The vast majority of those still trying to get out of Kabul were Afghans, the source said, adding that applicants for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program — an avenue for Afghans who worked for United States forces and agencies to get out of the country — are now permitted onto the airport.

SIV applicants were told not to come to the airport on Monday as the U.S. tried to clear backlogs of evacuees and ensure U.S. passport and green card holders got on aircraft out of Kabul before the Aug. 31 deadline to complete evacuations.

But solid estimates of the number of people both on and leaving the airport were hard to determine.

The Pentagon said early Tuesday that 17 U.S. military and partner nation aircraft evacuated approximately 16,000 people from Harmid Karzai International Airport within the previous 24 hours, with the U.S. Air Force transporting just under 11,000 of them.

That gave an opening to expand the evacuation, the source said.

"The aperture has widened," they said. SIV holders plus immediate family and anyone who can "clearly and credibly articulate a clear and credible connection" with the U.S. government could now get out, the source said.

Despite that relaxation of restrictions, the gates to the airport remained closed, the source said.

"But the people who are already there or being pulled in individually, they're flexing a bit," they said.

About 300 U.S. citizens had been brought in overnight, and moves were coordinated with the Taliban, the source said. The closure of the airport's gates, however, significantly reduces the number of SIV applicants who can reach the base.

Afghan security forces continued to use unofficial means to get their colleagues and friends onto the base, the source said. "Not sure who the Afghans are still pulling in, but it seems to be a steady trickle," they said.

The source also said there had been no progress in the evacuation of locally employed embassy staff, although planning was underway.

While the backlog of evacuees was being whittled down in Kabul, strain was showing up elsewhere in the route that would eventually lead evacuees to resettlement outside Afghanistan.

One of the main waypoints for evacuees, the massive U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, had reached its capacity of 7,800 evacuees on Monday.

Harrowing reports of executions

The frantic evacuation race comes against the backdrop of "harrowing and credible reports" of civilian executions and restrictions on women's rights under the Taliban in Afghanistan, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Tuesday.

The reports included executions of civilians and members of the Afghan security forces, restrictions on girls' right to attend schools, recruitment of child soldiers, and repression of peaceful protest, Bachalet told the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"Many people now fear reprisals by the Taliban against those working with the government or the international community; people who have worked to advance human rights and justice; or those whose lifestyles and opinions are simply perceived to be opposed to the Taliban ideology," Bachalet said.

The reports of violence lie in stark contrast to Taliban assurances to international media since seizing Kabul over a week ago. Taliban leaders said they would not seek retribution against their political enemies and did not want women to be discriminated against, with their standing in society guaranteed "within the framework of Islamic sharia" law.

NEW DELHI —

Her memory of the assassination attempt is hazy. What she does know is that her father asked the Taliban to do it.

A former Afghan policewoman, Khatera Hashmi was shot multiple times on her way home from work last October in the capital of Ghazni province, south of Kabul.

As she slumped over, one of the attackers grabbed her by the hair, pulled a knife and gouged out her eyes.

Two months pregnant at the time, Hashmi survived the gruesome attack, as did her unborn child. Hashmi's father had vehemently opposed her decision to join the police force, and although she didn't elaborate on her father's involvement, she told The Associated Press that the police had arrested and imprisoned him.

After recovering from her wounds, she and her husband fled to India, leaving two children in the care of her mother-in-law. Her third child, a daughter, was born a few months after their arrival in India.

However, like thousands of other Afghan refugees in India, any plans they had of returning were dashed this month by the Taliban's shockingly swift takeover of the country.

What many thought would be a short, temporary escape has turned into a long-lasting exile.

Another Afghan refugee is Mohammad Akbar Farhad, a 50-year-old artist. He too dreams of home while living in suspended animation abroad.

On a hot August afternoon at his apartment in New Delhi, his brush made brief, generous strokes on a huge oil painting depicting the ruins of the Bala Hissar, or High Fort, Kabul's ancient citadel that housed Afghan rulers for centuries.

"This is my only source of income," Farhad said, tracing the contours of the canvas with his fingers.

Back in Kabul, he faced repeated threats from Taliban sympathizers — always armed — who demanded he close his art studio. They said his work fell outside the bounds of Islamic law.

When the threats became more frequent, his entire family ran away to their village in the countryside. In their absence, their house was ransacked and his paintings torn to shreds.

"After that, I didn't even have the courage to touch my brush for months," he said.

Farhad fled with his family to India in 2018, expecting to return.

Earlier this year, the insurgents burned his art studio. All of his artwork was destroyed, leaving him crestfallen. And that was before the government in Kabul collapsed.

Concern for her loved ones back home fills Hashmi, the policewoman, with dread.

"I will never be able to go back to Afghanistan now, even if I wanted to," the 33-year-old said in her modest two-room apartment in New Delhi, where she lives with her husband and daughter Bahar, now seven months old.

Many Afghans fear the Taliban will erase the gains, especially for women, achieved in the decades since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. When the militant group ran the country in the late 1990s, they imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, forcing a sequestered life for many, particularly women and girls who were forbidden from education and most employment.

The Taliban now seek to present themselves as a more moderate force, offering amnesty to those who fought them and declaring the rights of women would be honored under Islamic law.

Hashmi is bitterly pessimistic.

"Women there won't be able to live in peace now. They won't even die in peace, even if they wish to," she said.

"Everything is gone," she said after a brief pause. Her husband, Mohammad Nabi, looked at her with tenderness but said nothing.

Nabi was a shop salesman back in Ghazni. The two fell deeply in love, and she made it clear before they got married that she planned to join the police.

"I saw what the Taliban did to women. I wanted to do something for them. I wanted women to get their rights," she said.

Nabi supported her decision, even though it would eventually make his wife a target, and the two began building a family together.

Hashmi's father threatened her, insisting she quit. She wouldn't budge.

After the attack that blinded her, the police said they arrested her father and sent him to a prison at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul. When the Taliban swept into the capital, Afghan forces at the former U.S. base surrendered. The prison had housed 5,000 inmates, including Taliban and Islamic State group fighters.

Imagining that her father might now be a free man fills Hashmi with horror.

"If I go back to Afghanistan, the Taliban might cut off my legs this time," she said.

But life in India remains difficult.

"Whenever I hold Bahar in my arms, I feel sad. My husband can't leave her alone. He can't even go to work. Sometimes we don't even have money to buy food," Hashmi said, winding her way back to the bedroom as Nabi holds her by the hand.

Although she says their love has grown while in exile, they also struggle. Food sometimes runs scarce because charity money from fellow refugees isn't enough. Phone calls home often cut out due to the poor cellular network. Being separated from her children is a nightmare.

And in particular, they fight to live a dignified life trapped within a complex bureaucratic process to register as refugees in India. The system strains under a yearslong backlog.

As of 2019, Afghans accounted for around a third of the nearly 40,000 refugees registered in India, according to the U.N. refugee agency. But that figure excludes those who, like Hashmi's family, are not registered with the U.N.

"My wife gave her eyes for her country. But nobody helped us," Nabi said. "Not even our own government."

For these two Afghan families, the Taliban blitz toward Kabul left them feeling isolated and further from home than ever.

"I haven't slept properly for weeks," said Farhad, the painter. "All I think of is my country."

His son Hassan is angry at his country's politicians — and the U.S.

"America has failed us," he said.

The U.S. military is considering "creative ways" to get Americans and others into the Kabul airport for evacuation from Afghanistan amid "acute" security threats, Biden administration officials said, and the Pentagon on Sunday ordered six U.S. commercial airlines to help move evacuees from temporary sites outside of Afghanistan.

At the one-week mark since the Taliban completed its takeover of the country, the U.S.-directed airlift from Kabul continued Sunday even as U.S. officials expressed growing concern about the threat from the Islamic State group. That worry comes on top of obstacles to that mission from the Taliban, as well as U.S. government bureaucratic problems.

President Joe Biden planned to provide a public update on Afghanistan later Sunday. He also was meeting with his national security team. Afghanistan will be the chief topic of discussion when Biden and leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations meet virtually on Tuesday.

"The threat is real, it is acute, it is persistent and something we’re focused with every tool in our arsenal," said Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

Sullivan said on CNN that 3,900 people had been airlifted out of Kabul on U.S. military flights over the past 24 hours. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public, said those people were flown on a total of 23 flights — 14 by C-17 transports and nine aboard C-130 cargo planes.

That represents an increase from 1,600 flown out aboard U.S. military planes in the previous 24 hours, but remains far below the 5,000 to 9,000 that the military says it has the capacity to airlift daily. Sullivan also said about 3,900 people were airlifted on non-U.S. military flights over the past 24 hours.

The Biden administration has given no firm estimate of the number of Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan. Some have put the total between 10,000 and 15.000. Sullivan on Sunday put it at "several thousand."

The British military said Sunday another seven people had been killed in the unceasing crush of crowds outside the airport. The U.S. military took control of the airport for evacuations a week ago as the capital fell to the Taliban. But Taliban forces controlling the streets around the airport, and the throngs of people gathering outside in hope of escape, have made it difficult and dangerous for foreigners and their Afghan allies to get through.

Republicans in Congress stepped up their criticism of Biden's response. "If the Taliban is saying that Americans can travel safely to the airport, then there is no better way to make sure they get safely to the airport than to use our military to escort them," GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, an Army veteran, said on ABC.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that as Biden's Aug. 31 deadline for ending the evacuation operation approaches, he will recommend whether to give it more time. Tens of thousands of Americans and others have yet to be flown out of the country.

Austin's interview with ABC aired Sunday but was taped Saturday. In a notice Sunday, the State Department urged people seeking to leave Afghanistan as part of an organized private evacuation effort not come to the Kabul airport "until you have received specific instructions" to do so from the U.S. Embassy’s flight organizer. The notice said that others, including American citizens, who have received specific instructions from the embassy to make their way to the airport should do so.

Austin said the airlift would continue for as long as possible.

"We’re gonna try our very best to get everybody, every American citizen who wants to get out, out," Austin said in the interview. "And we’ve got — we continue to look at different ways to — in creative ways — to reach out and contact American citizens and help them get into the airfield." He later said this included non-Americans who qualify for evacuation, including Afghans who have applied for Special Immigrant Visas.

Austin noted that the U.S. military on Thursday had used helicopters to move 169 Americans into the airport from the grounds of a nearby hotel in the capital. That is the only announced instance of U.S. forces going beyond the airport to get evacuees.

Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan under Presidents George W, Bush and Barack Obama, told CBS that Biden’s management of the withdrawal was "catastrophic" and had unleashed a "global crisis."

A central problem in the evacuation operation is processing evacuees once they reach other countries in the region and in Europe. Those temporary waystations, including in Qatar, Bahrain and Germany, are sometimes reaching capacity, although new sites are being made available, including in Spain.

In an attempt to alleviate that, and to free up military aircraft for missions from Kabul, the Pentagon on Sunday activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. The Defense Department said 18 aircraft from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, Omni Air, Hawaiian Airlines and United Airlines will be directed to ferry evacuees from interim waystations. The airlines will not fly into Afghanistan. The six participating airlines have agreed to assist for a little less than two weeks, which roughly coincides with the currently planned duration of the airlift, which is to end Aug. 31.

The civil airline reserve system was last activated in 2003 for the Iraq War. The commercial airliners will retain their civilian status but the military's Air Mobility Command will control the flights.

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Hope Yen and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

The United States is struggling to pick up the pace of American and Afghan evacuations at Kabul airport, constrained by obstacles ranging from armed Taliban checkpoints to paperwork problems. With an Aug. 31 deadline looming, tens of thousands remained to be airlifted from the chaotic country.

Taliban fighters and their checkpoints ringed the airport — major barriers for Afghans who fear that their past work with Westerners makes them prime targets for retribution. Hundreds of Afghans who lacked any papers or clearance for evacuation also congregated outside the airport, adding to the chaos that has prevented even some Afghans who do have papers and promises of flights from getting through.

It didn't help that many of the Taliban fighters could not read the documents.

In a hopeful sign, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in Washington that 6,000 people were cleared for evacuation Thursday and were expected to board military flights in coming hours. That would mark a major increase from recent days. About 2,000 passengers were flown out on each of the past two days, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

Kirby said the military has aircraft available to evacuate 5,000 to 9,000 people per day, but until Thursday far fewer designated evacuees had been able to reach, and then enter, the airport.

Kirby told reporters the limiting factor has been available evacuees, not aircraft. He said efforts were underway to speed processing, including adding State Department consular officers to verify paperwork of Americans and Afghans who managed to get to the airport. Additional entry gates had been opened, he said.

And yet, at the current rate it would be difficult for the U.S. to evacuate all of the Americans and Afghans who are qualified for and seeking evacuation by Aug. 31. President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would ensure no American was left behind, even if that meant staying beyond August, an arbitrary deadline that he set weeks before the Taliban climaxed a stunning military victory by taking Kabul last weekend. It was not clear if Biden might consider extending the deadline for evacuees who aren't American citizens. The president will deliver remarks on the evacuation Friday afternoon at the White House.

At the Kabul airport, military evacuation flights continued, but access remained difficult for many. On Thursday, Taliban militants fired into the air to try to control the crowds gathered at the airport's blast walls. Men, women and children fled. U.S. Navy fighter jets flew overhead, a standard military precaution but also a reminder to the Taliban that the U.S. has firepower to respond to a combat crisis.

There is no accurate figure of the number of people — Americans, Afghans or others — who are in need of evacuation as the process is almost entirely self-selecting. For example, the State Department says that when it ordered its nonessential embassy staff to leave Kabul in April after Biden's withdrawal announcement, fewer than 4,000 Americans had registered for security updates. The actual number, including dual U.S.-Afghan citizens along with family members, is likely much higher, with estimates ranging from 11,000 to 15,000. Tens of thousands of Afghans may also be in need of escape.

Compounding the uncertainty, the U.S. government has no way to track how many registered Americans may have left Afghanistan already. Some may have returned to the United States but others may have gone to third countries.

At the Pentagon, Kirby declined to say whether Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had recommended to Biden that he extend the Aug. 31 deadline. Given the Taliban's takeover of the country, staying beyond that date would require at least the Taliban's acquiescence, he said. He said he knew of no such talks yet between U.S. and Taliban commanders, who have been in regular touch for days to limit conflict at the airport as part of what the White House has termed a "safe passage" agreement worked out on Sunday.

"I think it is just a fundamental fact of the reality of where we are, that communications and a certain measure of agreement with the Taliban on what we're trying to accomplish has to occur," Kirby said.

Of the approximately 2,000 people airlifted from the airport in the 24 hours ended Wednesday morning, nearly 300 were Americans, Kirby said. U.S. lawmakers were briefed Thursday morning that 6,741 people had been evacuated since Aug. 14, including 1,762 American citizens and Green Card holders, according to two congressional aides.

Although Afghanistan had been a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said Thursday that evacuees are not required to get negative COVID-19 results.

"A blanket humanitarian waiver has been implemented for COVID-19 testing for all persons the U.S. government is relocating from Afghanistan," the department said. Medical exams, including COVID-19 tests, had been required for evacuees prior to the Taliban's takeover of Kabul, which added extra urgency to efforts to get at-risk Afghans out.

Additional American troops continued to arrive at the airport. As of Thursday there were about 5,200, including Marines who specialize in evacuation coordination and an Air Force unit that specializes in emergency airport operations. Biden has authorized a total deployment of about 6,000.

Hoping to secure evacuation seats are American citizens and other foreigners, Afghan allies of the Western forces, and women, journalists, activists and others most at risk from the fundamentalist Taliban.

In June, more than 20 diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul registered their concerns that the evacuation of Afghans who had worked for America was not proceeding quickly enough.

In a cable sent through the State Department's dissent channel, a time-honored method for foreign service officers to register opposition to administration policies, the diplomats said the situation on the ground was dire, that the Taliban would likely seize control of the capital within months of the Aug. 31 pullout, and urged the administration to immediately begin a concerted evacuation effort, according to officials familiar with the document.

Will U.S. troops go beyond the airport perimeter to collect and escort people? Austin suggested on Wednesday that this was not currently feasible. "We don't have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people," he told reporters.

Austin added that evacuations would continue "until the clock runs out or we run out of capability."

Afghans in danger because of their work with the U.S. military or U.S. organizations, and Americans scrambling to get them out, also pleaded with Washington to cut the red tape that has complicated matters.

"If we don't sort this out, we'll literally be condemning people to death," said Marina Kielpinski LeGree, the American head of a nonprofit, Ascend. The organization's young Afghan female colleagues were in the mass of people waiting for flights at the airport in the wake of days of mayhem, tear gas and gunshots.

The Biden administration is still struggling to answer basic questions about whether it can successfully evacuate tens of thousands of Americans and vulnerable Afghans in a race against a ticking clock ahead of the U.S. military's Aug. 31 Afghanistan withdrawal date.

On Tuesday, U.S. officials across the government provided some details about plans for the massive U.S. evacuation. But many key specifics remain unanswered, including exactly how many Americans are still in Afghanistan, how many Afghans the U.S. military believes it can evacuate and whether the plan will extend beyond the withdrawal deadline just two weeks away.

At a White House briefing, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. is relying on a commitment from the Taliban to allow for safe passage to the airport in Kabul, though it's still unclear whether the Taliban will allow Americans — let alone Afghan citizens trying to escape — to reach the airport.

In an interview with CNN Tuesday morning, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby would not say whether the U.S. military was prepared to "go out into the countryside" to aid those who need to reach to Kabul, acknowledging the military was only operating at the airport.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. officials gave differing answers about how many Americans remain in Afghanistan. Kirby said Tuesday morning it was 5,000 to 10,000, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in the afternoon that it was in fact 11,000, while congressional aides were told by State Department and Pentagon officials the number was actually between 10,000 and 15,000, according to three sources familiar with the briefings.

Some Americans were told to head to the airport, while others were instructed to continue sheltering in place.

The Biden administration has yet to put a number on how many Afghans it expects to evacuate — there were roughly 20,000 applicants in the Special Immigrant Visa program pipeline as of mid-July, in addition to their families and other vulnerable Afghans seeking to escape — and where these Afghans will be relocated.

The rush of people trying to evacuate as the Taliban swiftly took control of Kabul over the weekend led to chaotic scenes at the airport Monday of people desperately trying to escape, including several falling to their deaths as they clung to the departing aircraft. The U.S. military since gained control of the security situation at the airport, but things outside remained frantic Tuesday, with a crush of people at the gate still trying to get inside.

In another sign of chaos, Afghan passports of visa applicants at the U.S. embassy were destroyed amid the rapid U.S. closure of the facility, one lawmaker said.

A commitment from the Taliban

After facing sharp criticism for not prioritizing evacuations of vulnerable Afghans more quickly in the weeks after he announced the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan in April, President Joe Biden has made the hurried evacuation a priority for the military's final mission before its drawdown is complete.

The Biden administration says it is doing everything it can, but officials won't give clear goals for how many people they want to get out of the country given the chaotic environment.

It's also still unclear whether Biden would keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 if needed to continue the evacuations. Sullivan, who faced 45 minutes of questions from the White House podium Tuesday about the Biden administration's plans in Afghanistan, said the U.S. was talking to the Taliban about the exact timetable. He declined to say whether the U.S. was considering extending the withdrawal beyond the end of the month.

"I'm not going to comment on hypotheticals. I'll stay focused on the task at hand, getting as many people out as rapidly as possible and take that day by day," Sullivan said. "The Taliban have informed us they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport and we intend to hold them to that commitment."

Sullivan reiterated in a tweet Tuesday evening the U.S. intended to evacuate all Americans from Afghanistan.

But with Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban, it remains unclear precisely how many Afghans the administration can and will evacuate, and who will ultimately qualify for those government flights.

Evacuation plan still coming together

The State Department is still determining how to prioritize evacuations on U.S. military flights as it still scrambling to put together a list of Afghans to be evacuated under the SIV program and through other visas.

Two sources familiar with the discussions said the U.S. plans to evacuate American citizens, followed by Afghans with visas, Afghan SIV applicants with chief of mission approval and general Afghan SIV applicants.

U.S. officials at the airport continue to work out a plan for who gets evacuated amid the chaos of Afghans clamoring to leave, one source said.

There are tens of thousands of Afghans who have applied for the Afghan SIV program, and processing their applications can take years.

The first tranche of U.S. citizens were notified to get to the Kabul airport for an evacuation flight, but the State Department said others should remain sheltered in place until they receive instructions to depart.

Those Americans are spread out all over the country, and the officials said it is now up to those citizens to find their own way to Kabul airport — the officials insisted they had been "messaging" to U.S. citizens to depart Afghanistan "for a long time," and that many had decided not to try to leave sooner.

Asked about those who have been notified about flights but cannot get to the airport, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday, "If they feel that it is unsafe for them to make their way to the airport, they should not seek to do so.

"We will continue to do all we can to, and we will continue to be in touch with them, I should say, to provide clear guidance about when and how they should make their way to the airport compound," Price added.

U.S. officials said they've made clear to the Taliban not to interfere with the U.S. evacuation efforts, though they acknowledged there have been reports of people being turned away or even beaten. Still, Sullivan answered "yes" when asked if he believed the Taliban's commitment and said by and large Afghans have been able to get to the airport.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, visited the Kabul airport on Tuesday, saying that operations were being rapidly scaled up. "In meetings with Taliban senior leaders in Doha on Sunday, I cautioned them against interference in our evacuation, and made it clear to them that any attack would be met with overwhelming force in the defense of our forces," McKenzie said.

The Pentagon said Tuesday it expects to be able to evacuate 5,000 to 9,000 passengers per day once the evacuation at the airport is running at full steam. U.S. military flights on Tuesday "evacuated approximately more than 1,000 people, including 330 U.S. citizens and permanent residents," Price said in a statement Tuesday.

Price said the U.S. has "evacuated more than 3,000 people so far, including our personnel," and has relocated nearly 2,000 Afghan special immigrants to the United States.

'We are going to have to take people'

In the U.S., congressional offices have been fielding a multitude calls from constituents with relatives and friends at various stages of the visa process who are now desperately trying to leave Afghanistan, as well as U.S. citizens who are stuck and unsure if they can get beyond Taliban checkpoints to make it to the airport.

The office of Rep. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, told visa applicants visa and passport appointments at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, which has been closed and move to the airport, had been canceled — and that passports in the embassy's possession had been destroyed, seemingly making it more difficult for those Afghans to be able to leave the country.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about the passports. It is unclear why the passports were destroyed but it is possible that diplomats determined that it would have been dangerous for the documents to fall into the hands of the Taliban, who could then target those Afghans.

"We are going to have to take people without passports and vet them in other ways, like with their phone numbers for example, said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat and former State official. "Any Afghans braving the trip to the airport will not have wanted to go there with identifying documents, anyway."

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, said his office has opened more than 70 cases for constituents with relatives and friends stuck in Afghanistan in the SIV program trying to escape, and his aides are trying to get them into the system for processing.

"What we're trying to press upon the State Department and other federal agencies is, let's not be overly concerned about documentation, some of these people fled without their documents and we need to focus on getting as many of the people involved out of their as quickly as we can," Connolly told CNN.

'Nobody thought this was going to happen'

In the meantime, Afghans who worked for the U.S. are living in fear, desperate to try to get themselves and their loved ones to safety.

Ahmad Shah Mohibi, who worked in Afghanistan as a translator with the U.S. military, says he's trying to evacuate his parents. Although they received preliminary visa approval, the process has been slow, and it was delayed even further by curtailing of services at the U.S. Embassy. Now, with the embassy operating out of the airport with only limited staff, it's unclear how the State Department will handle their case.

Mohibi was 16 years old when he began working with the U.S. military at Camp Phoenix in Kabul. He provided an identity document that showed his age as 19, he said. He had learned English by taking classes and by memorizing manuals his father brought home from his work.

Now based in the U.S., he has tried in recent years to persuade his parents to leave Afghanistan, he says.

"My mom is scared of airplanes," he says. "Nobody thought this was going to happen like this."

Mohibi says he's also applied for visas for other family members in Afghanistan, but those are on a slower track under U.S. visa rules that could take years.

His fears for his family are real because the Taliban seem to know who he is. The Taliban spokesman blocked him on Twitter because he has spoken out about civilian atrocities the group has carried out in its drive to retake power.

WASHINGTON —

President Joe Biden is addressing the nation on Monday about the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, after the planned withdrawal of American forces turned deadly at Kabul’s airport as thousands tried to flee the country after the Taliban’s takeover.

Biden returned to the White House Monday afternoon from the Camp David presidential retreat ahead of his planned speech at 3:45 p.m. from the East Room. It will be his first public remarks on the Afghanistan situation in nearly a week. Biden and other top U.S. officials had been stunned by the pace of the Taliban’s swift routing of the Afghan military.

Senior U.S. military officials say the chaos at the airport left seven people dead Monday, including some who fell from a departing American military transport jet. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss ongoing operations.

Afghans rushed onto the tarmac of the capital’s airport as thousands tried to escape after the Taliban seized power. Some clung to the side of a U.S. military plane before takeoff, in a widely shared video that captured the desperation as America’s 20-year war comes to a chaotic end.

Another video showed the Afghans falling as the plane gained altitude over Kabul. U.S. troops resorted to firing warning shots and using helicopters to clear a path for transport aircraft.

The Pentagon confirmed Monday that U.S. forces shot and killed two individuals it said were armed, as Biden ordered another battalion of troops — about 1,000 troops — to secure the airfield, which was closed to arrivals and departures for hours Monday because of civilians on the runway.

The speed of the Afghan government’s collapse and the ensuing chaos posed the most serious test of Biden as commander in chief, and he came under withering criticism from Republicans who said that he had failed.

Biden campaigned as a seasoned expert in international relations and has spent months downplaying the prospect of an ascendant Taliban while arguing that Americans of all political persuasions have tired of a 20-year war, a conflict that demonstrated the limits of money and military might to force a Western-style democracy on a society not ready or willing to embrace it.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that the "speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated." He blamed the government’s fall on the Afghans themselves, telling NBC's "Today" show that the U.S. ultimately could not give Afghan security forces the "will" to fight to defend their fledgling democracy.

"Despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to give the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will and they ultimately decided that they would not fight for Kabul and they would not fight for the country," Sullivan said.

The turmoil in Afghanistan resets the focus in an unwelcome way for a president who has largely focused on a domestic agenda that includes emerging from the pandemic, winning congressional approval for trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending and protecting voting rights.

Biden remained at Camp David over the weekend, receiving regular briefings on Afghanistan and holding secure video conference calls with members of his national security team, according to senior White House officials. His administration released a single photo of the president on Sunday alone in a conference room meeting virtually with military, diplomatic and intelligence experts.

He is the fourth U.S. president to confront challenges in Afghanistan and has insisted he wouldn’t hand America’s longest war to his successor. But he will likely have to explain how security in Afghanistan unraveled so quickly, especially since he and others in the administration have insisted it wouldn’t happen.

"The jury is still out, but the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely," Biden said on July 8.

Just last week, though, administration officials warned privately that the military was crumbling, prompting Biden on Thursday to order thousands of American troops into the region to speed up evacuation plans.

Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also yearned to leave Afghanistan, but ultimately stood down in the face of resistance from military leaders and other political concerns. Biden, on the other hand, has been steadfast in his refusal to change the Aug. 31 deadline, in part because of his belief that the American public is on his side.

A late July ABC News/Ipsos poll, for instance, showed 55% of Americans approving of Biden’s handling of the troop withdrawal.

Most Republicans have not pushed Biden to keep troops in Afghanistan over the long term and they also supported Trump’s own push to exit the country. Still, some in the GOP stepped up their critique of Biden’s withdrawal strategy and said images from Sunday of American helicopters circling the U.S. Embassy in Kabul evoked the humiliating departure of U.S. personnel from Vietnam.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deemed the scenes of withdrawal as "the embarrassment of a superpower laid low."

Senior administration officials believe the U.S. will be able to maintain security at the Kabul airport long enough to extricate Americans and their allies, but the fate of those unable to get to the airport was far from certain.

In the upper ranks of Biden’s staff, the rapid collapse in Afghanistan only confirmed the decision to leave: If the meltdown of the Afghan forces would come so quickly after nearly two decades of American presence, another six months or a year or two or more would not have changed anything.

Biden has argued for more than a decade that Afghanistan was a kind of purgatory for the United States. He found it to be corrupt, addicted to America’s largesse and an unreliable partner that should be made to fend for itself. His goal was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, not building a country.

In July he said he made the decision to withdraw with "clear eyes." His judgment was that Afghanistan would be divided in a peace agreement with the Taliban, rather than falling all at once.

"There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan," he said in July. "The likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely."

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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, James LaPorta and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

KABUL, Afghanistan —

The Taliban have captured a large, heavily defended city in northern Afghanistan in a major setback for the government, and the insurgents are approaching the capital less than three weeks before the U.S. hopes to complete its troop withdrawal.

The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country's fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, hands the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan, confining the Western-backed government to the center and east.

Abas Ebrahimzada, a lawmaker from the Balkh province where the city is located, said the national army surrendered first, which prompted pro-government militias and other forces to lose morale and give up in the face of a Taliban onslaught launched earlier Saturday.

Ebrahimzada said Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ata Mohammad Noor, former warlords who command thousands of fighters, had fled the province and their whereabouts were unknown.

The Taliban have made major advances in recent days, including capturing Herat and Kandahar, the country’s second- and third-largest cities. They now control about 23 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, leaving the Western-backed government with a smattering of provinces in the center and east, as well as the capital, Kabul.

On Saturday, the Taliban captured all of Logar province, just south of Kabul, and detained local officials, said Hoda Ahmadi, a lawmaker from the province. She said the Taliban have reached the Char Asyab district, just 7 miles south of the capital.

Later, the insurgents took over Mihterlam, the capital of Laghman province, northeast of Kabul, without a fight, according to Zefon Safi, a lawmaker from the province.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had flown to Mazar-e-Sharif on Wednesday to rally the city’s defenses, meeting with several militia commanders, including Dostum and Noor.

On Saturday, Ghani delivered a televised speech, his first public appearance since the recent Taliban gains. He vowed not to give up the "achievements" of the 20 years since the U.S. toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

The U.S. has continued holding peace talks between the government and the Taliban in Qatar this week, and the international community has warned that a Taliban government brought about by force would be shunned. But the insurgents appear to have little interest in making concessions as they rack up victories on the battlefield.

"We have started consultations, inside the government with elders and political leaders, representatives of different levels of the community as well as our international allies," Ghani said. "Soon the results will be shared with you," he added, without elaborating further.

Hours later, his forces suffered one of the biggest setbacks since the Taliban offensive began.

Mazar-e-Sharif, home to a famous blue-tiled Muslim shrine, was a stronghold of the Northern Alliance, ethnic militias who helped the U.S. topple the Taliban in 2001.

In 1997, as many as 2,000 Taliban fighters were captured and killed by forces loyal to Mohammed Mohaqiq, a Shiite Hazara leader, and his ethnic Uzbek allies. The following year, the Taliban returned and killed thousands of Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif in a revenge attack.

Several makeshift camps had sprung up around Mazar-e-Sharif where mostly ethnic Hazaras had taken shelter after fleeing their homes in outlying areas. They said the Taliban had detained relatives who sought to leave their districts and in some cases burned schools.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have fled their homes, with many fearing a return to the Taliban’s oppressive rule. The group had previously governed Afghanistan under a harsh version of Islamic law in which women were forbidden to work or attend school, and could not leave their homes without a male relative accompanying them.

Salima Mazari, one of the few female district governors in the country, expressed fears about a Taliban takeover earlier Saturday in an interview from Mazar-e-Sharif, before it fell.

"There will be no place for women," said Mazari, who governs a district of 36,000 people near the northern city. "In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes."

The Taliban also captured the capital of Paktika, bordering Pakistan, according to Khalid Asad, a lawmaker from the province. He said fighting broke out in Sharana early Saturday but ended after local elders intervened to negotiate a pullout. The small province of Kunar, also bordering Pakistan, fell without a fight, according to Neamatullah Karyab, a lawmaker from the area.

Sayed Hussan Gerdezi, a lawmaker from the neighboring Paktia province, said the Taliban seized most of its local capital, Gardez, but that battles with government forces were still underway. The Taliban said they controlled the city.

The Taliban also took control of Maimana, the capital of northern Faryab province, said Fawzia Raoufi, a lawmaker from the province.

The withdrawal of foreign troops and the swift collapse of Afghanistan's own forces — despite hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. aid over the years — has raised fears the Taliban could return to power or that the country could be shattered by factional fighting, as it was after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. It's also prompted many American and Afghan veterans of the conflict to question whether two decades of blood and treasure was worth it.

Afghans have been streaming into Kabul's international airport in recent days, desperate to fly out, even as more American troops have arrived to help partially evacuate the U.S. Embassy.

The first Marines from a contingent of 3,000 arrived Friday. The rest are expected by Sunday, and their deployment has raised questions about whether the administration will meet its Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.

The U.S. Air Force has carried out several airstrikes to aid its Afghan allies on the ground but they appear to have done little to stem the Taliban's advance. A B-52 bomber and other warplanes traversed the country's airspace Saturday, flight-tracking data showed.

The Taliban meanwhile released a video announcing the takeover of the main radio station in the southern city of Kandahar, which fell to the insurgents earlier this week, renaming it the Voice of Sharia, or Islamic law.

In the video, an unnamed insurgent said all employees were present and would broadcast news, political analysis and recitations of the Quran, the Islamic holy book. It appears the station will no longer play music. It was not clear if the Taliban had purged the previous employees or allowed them to return to work.

The U.S. invaded shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, which al-Qaida planned and carried out while being sheltered by Taliban. After rapidly ousting the Taliban, the U.S. shifted toward nation-building, hoping to create a modern Afghan state after decades of war and unrest.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced a timeline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of August, pledging to end America's longest war. His predecessor, President Donald Trump, had reached an agreement with the Taliban to pave the way for a U.S. pullout.

Biden's announcement set the latest offensive in motion. The Taliban, who have long controlled large parts of the Afghan countryside, moved quickly to seize provincial capitals, border crossings and other key infrastructure.

"The security situation in the city is getting worse," said Kawa Basharat, a resident in Mazar-e-Sharif, hours before the city fell. "I want peace and stability; the fighting should be stopped."

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Rahim reported from Istanbul and Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Ahmad Seir in Kabul, Afghanistan contributed.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Joe Biden isn't changing his mind. On Thursday, he promised to have all American troops out of Afghanistan by August 31.

Earlier this year, Biden said he wanted it done by September 11.

"We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build," Biden said Thursday.

AMERICA'S SACRIFICE

Afghanistan is the longest war in American history, lasting nearly 20 years.

In that time, 2,448 Americans have died in Afghanistan, according to the president. Another 20,722 Americans have been wounded.

The United Nations estimates at least 35,000 Afghan civilians were killed from 2001 to 2019.

American taxpayers have paid at least $825 billion for operations and recent expenses have totaled around $3 billion/month.

VETERAN REACTION

As the United States finishes its operation, many veterans are reacting and have mixed feelings, mainly because the Taliban is continuing to regain regions of the country.

As a reminder, the U.S. entered Afghanistan because the Taliban was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind the September 11 attacks.

Toyia Tucker is an Air Force veteran who lives in Columbus, Georgia. Tucker worries about what will happen to women's rights in the country. The Taliban previously banned high-heel shoes and even reading.

"The Taliban right now is terrorizing those citizens. No, I don't think it will get better for women," said Tucker, an Air Force veteran whose mother and ex-husband served on the ground in Afghanistan.

Robert Couture is a veteran who retired as a Master Sergeant.

"It’s a concern, I remember being in Afghanistan and seeing little girls that were sick in the village and I wasn’t allowed to pick up and hug them, and that always stays with me," Couture said.

Both veterans, however, recognize why Biden has decided to bring the war to a conclusion.

"You have mixed feelings, 20 years is a long time," Tucker said.

"Afghanistan is a sovereign nation," Couture said.