are among those wounded among the casualties at the airport. the white house taking this seriously. we learned a short time ago that president biden has been briefed. our kaitlan collins at the white house. we re hearing the president is in the situation room on this. reporter: that is where he s monitoring all of the developments coming out of afghanistan including this explosion at the airport. as they are still trying to figure out what happened an the number of casualties. the pentagon has confirmed but trying to determine the actual number and what the except of the damage of this tack is. and so right now we are told by a white house official that president biden is monitoring this from the situation room with defense secretary lloyd austin and anthony blinken. they briefed the president at about 9:15 a.m. this morning on the latest situation in afghanistan and that is when we found out about the explosion that happened. so it appears he still is in the situation room monitorin
[ inaudible ] and now the issue is scale. they love scale, isis. they love to be able to cause carnage on the the most graphic level to humiliate and embarrass the two key enemies which are the taliban and the united states. the taliban have been fighting isis and killing them in large quantities whenever they rise up because they want to dominate the islamic space there and because they learned their lesson of having given safe haven to al qaeda and have been working very hard, perhaps so much on emass kul ating al qaeda, but they have been working hard to stamp out the ultra violent brand of isis started in syria and started acrass afghanistan and trying to get a big publicity stunt if it
with intelligence about a threat in recent days, a threat to the airport. we do not have any confirmation of casualties and who would be among the casualties. kylie atwood at the state department, what is latest you re hearing there. the state department just yesterday warned americans away from the kabul airport specifically because of terror threats to the airport. reporter: yeah, that is right. just this morning the top state department official in afghanistan warned of an imminent threat, right. we know that yesterday they told americans to stay away, to leave the gates at the airport if they were there trying to get into the airport. of course to get on to these evacuation flights. it is good news that the united states put out that alert for americans frankly because it means hopefully thatsy lot of the americans that were there left. but the reality on the ground is that we have seen a tremendous number of afghans surrounding these gates, where we are reporting that this explo
we should also note that in the moments and days leading up to this, that the u.s. had a warned it had intelligence about a threat to the airport. h.r. mcmaster, that particular warning was about isis-k, as being the one targing the airport. but the fact is there are many terror groups operating inside of afghanistan today. the taliban among them. al qaeda and many thousands of fighter as cording to the u.n. now flocking to afghanistan to join the groups and to train with the groups and make it what it was before 9/11, a terror haven. what does that mean for the security of the united states to have a terror haven like that in afghanistan and does it put us sat risk again of what we saw 20 years ago, a group like al qaeda, plotting attack on the u.s. homeland? absolutely. and it puts us at risk of what we saw just six years ago when isis took over large swaths of syria and iraq and then became
from a group called haqqani s and they were into the taliban as part of changes they made for five years ago. so looking within the possible candidates if it terms to to have been a terror attack and that plaques that almost inevitable. there is not just one potential candidate here. and i should point out it does appear to some reporting that the elements of the haqqani network were provided the job of security around the airport as well. so this enormously fraught situation to some degree there were deep fears, we could have seen this before. but the crushing instead and the chaos seem to take over has potentially many different suspects. jim. no question. many groups capable. and the taliban, a group that carried out many hundreds of terror attacks in that country themselves, the targeted afghan civilians like this one appears to have targeted as well as u.s. forces here. as we said earlier, that the latest that the u.s. personnel