No plans to increase troops at Kabul airport as deadline looms, Pentagon says
Evacuation flights peaked over the past 24 hours, but security fears are growing amid Taliban warning.
The Pentagon has no plans to request additional troops to secure Kabul airport as evacuations pick up ahead of an expected withdrawal deadline next week, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday.
Some 16,000 people were flown out of Hamid Karzai International Airport over the previous 24 hours, a substantial jump in evacuations after a backlog of more than 10,000 people inside the airport over the weekend forced guards to turn people away.
Around 11,000 of those evacuated over the previous day were flown by the US military, officials said.
“I'm very, very confident we'll sustain that effort,” Gen. Steve Lyons, the head of US Transportation Command, told reporters in a virtual briefing Monday.
