The United States’s and allies’ evacuations efforts in Kabul have continued at a steady pace as of Wednesday morning.
Nearly 88,000 people have been evacuated from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul this month on both U.S. and coalition aircraft with all but approximately 5,000 having come since Aug. 14.
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The joint efforts have led to approximately 19,000 evacuations on Tuesday, which is a slight dip from the 21,600 people who departed the previous day. There were evacuation flights every 39 minutes, according to Army Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor, the Joint Staff deputy director for regional operations.
Maintaining this level of efficiency is “definitely the plan,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing. “So our plan is to continue this pace as aggressively as we can.”
About 4,400 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan, Kirby said during Wednesday’s briefing, which is up from the 4,000 Americans who had been evacuated as of the previous afternoon.
In addition to running the airport in Kabul, U.S. forces conducted their third extraction operation, this one via helicopter, for “less than 20” people who were unable to get to the airport on their own, Kirby said.
“So last night, during the period of darkness, there was an operation to be able to go out and safely evacuate evacuees back into Kabul,” Taylor said during Wednesday’s briefing. “They were at HKAI, and they’re safely there preparing to be evacuated.”
The rescue operation took place in Kabul.
The U.S. has approximately 5,400 troops still in Afghanistan, the Pentagon spokesman said, following reports that some troops had begun departing.
“As we have made consistently clear, commanders on the ground are empowered to make any adjustments they see fit, when they see fit. That includes changes to the footprint. To that end, we can confirm reports of the departure from Afghanistan of several hundred U.S. troops,” Kirby said in a statement Tuesday.
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“These troops represent a mix of headquarters staff, maintenance and other enabling functions that were scheduled to leave and whose mission at the airport was complete. Their departure represents prudent and efficient force management. It will have no impact on the mission at hand,” he added.
President Joe Biden decided to stick to the Aug. 31 deadline despite competing pressures as to whether to extend the evacuation window on Tuesday.
