The United States Embassy in Afghanistan told Americans at certain gates at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to leave immediately, citing "security threats." The three gates were the Abbey Gate, the East Gate, and the North Gate.
"Because of security threats outside the gates of Kabul airport, we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so," the alert said.
According to CNN, U.S. officials believe that ISIS-K, a group that opposes the Taliban, wants to create chaos and undermine the Taliban by attacking crowds and security forces near the airport. President Biden mentioned the group in a speech about the ongoing evacuation efforts.
"Every day we're on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians," Biden said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that roughly 4,500 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan in the past ten days. He said that around 1,500 Americans remain in Afghanistan and that the U.S. officials are working around the clock to get them out of the country.
"We're aggressively reaching out to them multiple times a day, through multiple channels of communication — phone, email, text messaging — to determine whether they still want to leave," Blinken said.
"Many of them are dual nationals and may consider Afghanistan their home, who lived there for decades or who want to stay close to extended family," he added.