The US State Department has urged all Americans near Afghanistan's Kabul airport to leave the area immediately because of a "specific, credible threat". US President Joe Biden stated that his commanders informed him that an attack is highly likely in the next 24-36 hour. The official warning early Sunday morning said US citizens should avoid traveling to the airport and avoid all airport gates at this time. It specifically noted the South (Airport Circle) gate, the new ministry of the interior, and the gate near the Panjshir Petrol station on the northwest side of the airport.
US President Joe Biden had vowed to keep up airstrikes against the Islamic extremist group whose suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed scores of Afghans and 13 American service members. Another terror attack, he said, is highly likely this weekend as the US winds down its evacuation.
The Pentagon said the remaining contingent of US forces at the airport, now numbering fewer than 4,000, had begun their final withdrawal ahead of Biden's deadline for ending the evacuation.
After getting briefed on a US drone mission in eastern Afghanistan that the Pentagon said killed two members of the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate early Saturday, Biden said the extremists can expect more.
"This strike was not the last," Biden said in a statement. We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.
The evacuation proceeded as tensions rose over the prospect of another IS attack.
"Our commanders informed me that an attack is highly likely in the next 24-36 hours," Biden said, adding that he has instructed them to take all possible measures to protect their troops, who are securing the airport and helping bring onto the airfield Americans and others desperate to escape Taliban rule.
The remains of the 13 American troops were on their way to the United States, the Pentagon said. Their voyage marked a painful moment in a nearly 20-year American war that cost more than 2,400 US military lives and is ending with the return to power of a Taliban movement that was ousted when US forces invaded in October 2001.
The remains of troops killed in action overseas are usually flown back to the US via Dover Air Base in Delaware, where fallen troops' return to US soil is marked by a solemn movement known as the dignified transfer.
-Inputs from agencies