The US military on Tuesday pulled off its biggest day of evacuation flights from Afghanistan since the operation began. But deadly violence that has blocked many desperate evacuees from entering Kabul’s airport persisted, and the Taliban signaled they might soon seek to shut down the airlifts.
Amid the tense operation to get people out of the country, CIA Director William Burns secretly swooped into Kabul on Monday to meet with the Taliban’s top political leader, a US official told The Associated Press.
About 21,600 people were flown safely out of Taliban-held Afghanistan in the 24-hour period that ended early Tuesday, the White House said. That compares with about 16,000 the previous day.
Thirty-seven US Military flights — 32 C-17s and 5 C-130s — carried about 12,700 evacuees. An additional 8,900 people flew out aboard 57 flights by US allies.
Pentagon chief spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the faster pace of evacuation was partly due to coordination with Taliban commanders on getting evacuees into the airport.
“Thus far, and going forward, it does require constant coordination and deconfliction with the Taliban,” Kirby said. “What we’ve seen is, this deconfliction has worked well in terms of allowing access and flow as well as reducing the overall size of the crowds just outside the airport.”
With access to the airport still difficult Monday, the U.S. Military went beyond the perimeter to carry out another helicopter retrieval of Americans. US officials said a military helicopter picked up 16 American citizens Monday and brought them to the airfield for evacuation.
This was at least the second such rescue mission beyond the airport; Kirby said that last Thursday, three Army helicopters picked up 169 Americans near a hotel just beyond the airport gate and flew them onto the airfield.