Aug 23, 2021: US President Joe Biden has promised his “unwavering commitment” to evacuate American citizens and endangered Afghans from Kabul, but has warned of further obstacles, including the threat of an ISIL-linked outfit called ISKP Islamic State attack in Khorasan province.

He said he had instructed the State Department to contact Americans stranded in Afghanistan by phone, e-mail and other means, and that Washington planned to transfer them to the airport in Kabul.

“Let me be clear, the evacuation of thousands from Kabul is going to be hard and painful” and would have been “no matter when it began”, Biden said in a briefing at the White House on Sunday.

“We’re executing a plan to move groups of these Americans to safety and to safely and effectively move them to the airport compound. For security reasons, I’m not going to go into detail,” he said. “But I will say again today what I’ve said before: Any American who wants to get home will get home.”

Biden said that since August 14, the US-led plane has evacuated 28,000 people. He said it included 11,000 who left Kabul this weekend in a 36-hour period, but did not provide details.

Hundreds of problems and tens of thousands of people remain to board planes from Kabul, a process which has been slowed down by US bureaucracy.

The British Defense Ministry said seven Afghans were killed in a stampede on Sunday, while a NATO official said at least 20 people had been killed in and around the airport in the past seven days. Eyewitnesses said the victims were shot or killed in a stampede at the Kabul airport.

The U.S. military is currently controlling air traffic on both civilian and military sides of the Kabul airport, and Biden said without elaborating that U.S. forces have been able to improve access to the airport for Americans and other flights. He suggested that the scope be widened, expanding the “safe zone”.

Earlier on Sunday, senior US officials said the Pentagon was considering “creative ways” to evacuate Americans and others at Kabul airport amid concerns about security threats to US armed groups, including the ISKP which can try to take advantage of the chaos around the airport.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jack Sullivan, said regarding the evacuation from Kabul: “The threat is real, it’s serious, it’s permanent and that’s what we’re focusing on at every turn in our arsenal.”

A key issue in the evacuation operation is to deal with the evacuation from Kabul when the flights leave the region and enter European countries. Those temporary route stations, including Qatar, Bahrain and Germany, sometimes reach full capacity, although new sites are being made available, including in Spain.

In an effort to eliminate it and free military aircraft from the mission in Kabul, the Pentagon activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet on Sunday.

The Pentagon says 18 aircraft belonging to American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Airlines, Omni Air, Hawaiian Airlines and United Airlines will be instructed to take the evacuated through transit routes. Those Airlines will not fly to Kabul.

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