one uk minister describing it as imminent and lethal. in just minutes president biden will meet with his national security team about this rapidly escalating situation. so far the u.s. has evacuated more than 101,000 people including 13,000 over just the last 24 hours. as for american citizens, the state department says 1500 are still in the country, including a third who have been in contact with our government. the white house says they are on track to wrap this up by the president s august 31 deadline. and the taliban is speeding things up, keeping crowds away from the airport. their spokesman telling nbc news that they will stay out of the way for now. translator: we don t want our countrymen to go to america. whatever they have done in the past, we have given them amnesty. we need young educated professionals for our nation. but if they want to leave, it is their choice. keep in mind an isis affiliate still poses an
immediate threat to people in and around the airport. and with the evacuation possibly winding down this weekend, the threat of violence is growing by the minute. we ve got reporters covering every angle of this story. and i have to start with courtney kube at the pentagon. what do we know about this warning last night, what is the security threat for real on the ground? reporter: it is very real and this is a persistent 24re9 but threat but there is a new element to it. the concern for the isis khorasan, that is the overall name for the larger group that operates there in afghanistan. the big concern remains around the gates to the airport. there have been as we ve seen for days now crowds gathering around those gates trying to get in, most of those if not all are
worked in kabul. but it s also one of the locations where there have been a large crowd growing. the crowd actually had been so big that just a week ago today, last thursday, there was a group of 159 americans who were planning to go from that hotel through the abby gate to get into the airport for evacuation. and the crowd got so big that the u.s. military commander made the decision to actually take several chinook helicopters, land them at the hotel and get americans safely over the crowd so that they wouldn t face the poe tepgs threats of that crowd in there. again, chris, this is all developing. that s what we know about the overall situation right now. give us more background, if i can ask, when they put out that warning and telling americans basically stay away from the airport. one of the things they said out of the u.s. embassy was, we have contingency plans in place, however, for emergencies, and they asked them to monitor local media. do we know anything about contingency
president s speech at 5:00 p.m. see you tomorrow at 3:00. your world gets started in a few seconds. see you then. neil: all right. we re getting word that there s been another blast heard by the kabul airport. this just a few minutes ago from residents in the area that said it was unmistaken a blast. we don t know more than that. it comes on the heels of two separate attacks that have already claimed 12 u.s. soldiers and injured 15 others and taken out 50 afghan nationals. welcome, everybody, i m neil cavuto. we re following the fast-moving
0 casualties are unclear at this time. we will provide additional details when we can. we also learned moments ago that president biden has been briefed on that explosion outside of kabul airport. a white house official tells cnn. and we are waiting on a pentagon press briefing which will happen in about 30 minutes from now. the back ground on this, as you look at a live picture from the kabul airport, that in recent days and yesterday we reported the u.s. has been very concerned about a credible threat stream about potential terror attacks targeting the gates to the airport and the crowds around those gates. the u.s. believing that terror groups had both the capability and the planning to carry out such attacks. there is still no attribution for these attacks or as we said, any confirmation about casualties. we have our reporters covering the story. let s begin with nick paton walsh in doha. we see now a confirmed attack. only the families of the u.s. serve men concerned about who