are the those are the largest ones. perfectly reasonable. chairman mccaul today you vowed to get answers going all the way up the chain if you need to retired general frank mckenzie, the commander who oversaw the us withdrawal from afghanistan, has criticized both trump and biden for what occurred. do you mean that far up the chain? well the rules of engagement go all the way up to the national security council. it appeared from the testimony. there are no rules of engagement on the ground at h. kaya surrounded by the taliban airport in kabul and i think most importantly, you know, tyler saw the suicide bomber in his sights. he got his team together. you get the psyops intelligence team. they identified him as the suicide bomber through an intelligence bulletin and then rent it up to his commanding officer, who then replied, you don t have permission to engage because i don t have that authority well. and then they said, well, who
and other threats to the aircraft? we have not been able to run that information down as far as locations of other attacks in kabul. i can t confirm there have been other attacks in kabul away from h kaya today. i will tell you this. the safety of our aircraft coming in and out is of paramount importance. you have the opportunity for 450 or more people to die. we don t believe they have a man pad capable of doing it. they have taken shots at our aircraft on occasion without effect. we think that s going to continue. as you know, military aircraft have a variety of self-defense systems. what s more vulnerable are the charter aircraft that do not have those systems. with our isr we look very
0 officials believe isis-k was behind the attacks, but they re still working to confirm that. the state department had been warning for days of a terror attack at the airport. we have reporters standing by. let s start with barbara starr at the pentagon. what do we know about these military members who were killed and what we re expected to hear from the pentagon? in just a very short while we are expecting to hear from general frank mckenzie, the head of the u.s. central command which oversees military operations in the gulf, the middle east, afghanistan. we expect to hear from him. i see john kirby there. the general will have some brief opening remarks. we ll obviously address the events in kabul today as well as the evacuation mission and where we are and where we re going. we ll take questions. i will moderate the questions. i will call on you. please before you ask your question identify yourselves and your outlet so the general has an idea who he s talking to. just a remin
jen psaki and jake sullivan leading the briefing. in terms of the president s engagement today, engaging with his national security team, make a few comments broadly on the situation, then i ll be happy to take your questions. this morning, the president spoke with military commanders for an operational briefing on security at the international airport, known as hkaya. spoke with secretary austin, milley, base lee, and myself. they have procured h kaya. and flights are taking off. following the operational briefing with military commanders, the president and vice president met by secure video krchls with their national security team to hear intelligence, security, and diplomatic updates on the evolving situation in afghanistan. they discussed status of ongoing
at about roughly 2,500 and by the end of the day approximately 4,000 troops on the ground in kabul. forces will continue to flow in and reinforce the state department and dod effort there. the operation is ongoing and i d like to give you a few more details on that operation. hkaya is open for military flight operations and limited commercial flight operations. throughout the nine nine c17s arrived delivering equipment and approximately 1,000 troops. additionally, seven c17s departed. these flights lifted approximately 700 to 800 passengers and we can confirm 165 of these passengers are american citizens. the rest are a mix of siv