so no matter what, i'll just bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you or i me. hello, i am, i am mazda watching al jazeera life from london with our ongoing coverage of the breaking news story from afghanistan. this hour were as many as 16 people are reported dead after a double bomb attack outside. cobble airport and thousands were gathered, hoping to escape among the dead, a number of children and according to the reuters news agencies. they're reporting the 11 us marines and also died along with a navy medic, us and u. k. continuing to el, if people out of the country, but several other countries have stopped their evacuations early.

ah, well of course that we're focusing on, i've gone histone this out by the taliban says at least 13 people have been killed into explosions outside called both international airport. but medical sources have told you there are as many as 60 people have been killed in the attack. penn again is speaking about these latest development. so let's listen then ladders detonated in the vicinity of the hammock, carson international airport. and in the vicinity of the barren hotel, which was immediately adjacent, the attack on the abbey gate was followed by a number of isis gunman who opened fire and civilians and military forces. at this time, we know that 12 us service members have been killed in the attack. in 15 more service members have been injured. a number of afghan civilians were also killed and injured in the attack. retreating some of them aboard h tire. many other african civilians have been taken out of hospitals in town were

still working to calculate the total loss as we just don't know what, what that is right now. their loss weighs heavily on us all. and i'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through my prepared remarks. we continue to focus on the protection of our forces in the evacuated z. as the evacuation continues. let me be clear, while we are saddened by the loss of life, both us and afghan were continued to execute the mission. our mission is to evacuate us citizens, 3rd country nationals, special immigrant visa holders, u. s embassy, staff, and afghans at risk. despite this attack, we are continuing the mission, the evacuation at best speed, and as of today, we have approximately 5000 evacuees on the ramp at h. kyle, a, waiting. earlier. since august, the 14th we vacuumed more than 104000 civilians from the, from age over 66000 by the united states. and over 37000 by our allies and partners . and that includes bringing out about $5000.00 americans at the secretary state

said yesterday, we believe that there are about 1000 probably a little more than a 1000 american citizens left. and at this point, we're doing everything we can in concert with our department state partners to reach out to them and to help them. li, if they want to leave. and remember not everybody wants to late. yesterday we brought in over 500 american citizens. it would be difficult to overestimate the number of unusual challenges in competing demands that are forces on the ground face. the threat or our forces, particularly from ices, k is very real. as we have seen today. i would also like to express the sense of profound pride i have in the creative, determined and professional way that, that our forces have overcome those challenges and to deliver the, the results that we talked about in my opening portion. ready remarks, the number of people that we've been able to extract from afghanistan would also be remiss. it may not mentioned the tremendous contributions of many coalition

partners. and they stood with us on the ground a days trial, and also the interagency and international partners who supported the evacuation. the many soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen who support this operation down range across the central command. the european command and the northern command areas are responsibility. moreover, this evacuation could simply not have been done without the amazing flexibility. u . s. transportation coming in the earlier provided by the united states air force. no other military in the world is anything like it. i'd also like to think the host nations that have generously provided access to their facilities for the processing the care and feeding of our evacuation. i also need to acknowledge the temporary suffering the summer of our evacuation had to endure. please know that we continue to execute our number one mission, which is to get as many american citizens and other evacuees as possible out of afghanistan. we also continue to expand the capacity and are in immediate facilities to ensure safe sanitary and humane conditions for evacuation. while

continuing to look for ultimate ways to expedite their processing, an ultimate transfer to the united states or other destinations. i'd like to close out my remarks today by just taking a moment to describe the heroism that our marines, soldiers, and sailors are exhibiting. as they screen the people who are coming onto the airfield. this is close up or the breath of the person you are searching is a phone you. while we have over watch in place, we still have to touch the close of the person that's coming in. i think you all can appreciate the courage and the dedication. it is necessary to do this job and to do at time after time. please remember that we have screened over 104000 people . finally, i'd like to offer my profound condolences to the families of our service men and women and afghan civilians lost their lives. today. we have put more than $5000.00 us service members at risk to save as many civilians as we can. it's a noble mission in the day. we have seen 1st hand how dangerous that mission is

isis will not deter us from accomplishing the mission. i can assure you of that. all americans can and should be proud of men in one of the armed forces were facing these dangers, had on, with their international partners and all our other friends that are with us. and we appreciate your thoughts and prayers for all our service members who are carrying on this mission today. john, i'm not ready to take questions. thank you. general will start with the leader. thank you. general mackenzie leed about with a p. thank you for taking the time to do that. can you give us your assessment of the threat going forward? what are you seeing on the ground now? does this cut the evacuation short? do you believe? and are people able to get on to the airport now? and then finally, the president has warned that any attacks against the us would be answered. will

this attack be answered miller, militarily, by the us? a number of questions there, let me try to take him in order. so 1st of all, the rep from isis is extremely real. we've been talking about this several days. it's going to actually manifested civil here last few hours with an actual attack. we believe it is their desire to continue those attacks and we expect those attacks to continue and we're doing everything we can to be prepared for those attacks. that includes reaching out to the taliban who are actually providing the outer supreme court and around the airfield to make sure they know what we expect them to do to protect us. and we will continue to coordinate with them as, as they go forward. we are continuing to bring people on to the field. we just brought a number of buses of aboard the airfield over the last couple of 3 hours. so we continue to process, we'll continue to flow. people out. the plan is designed to operate while under stress and under attack. and we will continue to do that. we will coordinate very carefully to make sure that it's safe for american citizens to come to the airfield . if it's not, we'll tell the whole and then we'll, you know,

we'll work other ways to try to get them to the airfield. but i think our mission remains were still committed at a floor and people out up until we terminate operations at some point, you know, towards the end of the month. and, but i think we have the ability to actually do all of those things as we go forward . let me just come back one moment and you talked about going after isis. yes. if we can find who's associated with this, we will go after them. we've been clear all along that we're going to retain the right to operate against isis in afghanistan. and we are working very hard right now to determine attribution to determine who's associated with this cowardly attack. and we're prepared to take action against them. 247. we are looking for them. the david general de barton was cbs 27 casually. isn't number 12 dead. could you explain the circumstances of these attacks which resulted in such

high casualties for the u. s. church or davis? so 1st of all, you will understand that we're still investigating the exact circumstances. what i can tell you is this, the attack occurred at a gate navigate. we have to check people before they get onto the airfield. we have to ensure they're not caring a bomb or any other kind of weapon that could ultimately make its way onto an aircraft that requires physical screening. you can't do that with stand off. you ultimately have to get very close to that person. so while the, the, the base itself is surrounded with the walls where, well bunkered in, we've done a variety of things to protect ourselves at these interface points. these gates where people actually come on the airfield. there's no substitute for a young or young man or woman, young, united states, man or woman standing up. they are conducting a search of that person before a month. now the taliban are conducted searches before they get to that point. and sometimes a search hasn't been good and sometimes not. i will simply note that before this attract, we'd pass a 104000 people through. so this attack has one to many. we will,

we'll evaluate what happened. we'll find ways to always get better. but the key thing is you don't want to let somebody on an airplane sharing a bomb because that could result even massive loss of likes, an air if an airplane would be destroyed. so you gotta do the searches. we work with our african partners on the ground, the in issue elements to conduct those searches. but ultimately, americans have got to be in danger to do the searches that really there's really no other way to do it. and again i, i cannot tell you how impressed i am with the daily heroism of the men and women that are out there doing this work. typically, solar sailors and marines that are doing that work. and they're right up close to thousands of people that are flowing through the airfield, see the images, and be able to get them do it. day after day. is remarkable. and this time looks like somebody got close to us. we'll find out why we'll try to improve our procedures. it is 121212 service members, 9. nobody feels that more closely more directly to me and everyone else in the

chain of command. and we recognize that we need to continue to evaluate our procedures as we go. for the same time, there's a tension there. we have to continue to let people own the airfield because that is why we are there. we're not there to defend ourselves. we're there to defend ourselves while we process american citizens 1st, but also the other categories of people that i've mentioned. get them to a place where we can fly him out to a safer, better future. so just to be clear this, this suicide bomber was going through the gate being search checked by us service numbers one he detonator disaster david, that's, that would be my working assumption. i know this, he did not get inside the he did not get only installation, it was at the interface point where they try to come in with this attack occurred. and we just don't know more right now we're gathering that information if you will, understandable. we're investigating that right now, our focus really, we have other active threat strings, extremely active threats in the airfield. we want to make sure that we've taken the

steps we need to take the. so there are focuses on that over the next few hours a day or 2. we'll learn a lot more about what happened here. i'm sure we'll be able to share that with right now. our focus is actually going forward, ensuring that another attack of this nature does not occur. because as you know, typically the pattern is multiple attacks and we want to be prepared be ready to defend against that. courtney mckenzie, it's courtney cubey from be seen is. can you tell us a little bit more about the, the, these extremely real additional threats from isis is concerned about more suicide attacks. and also about some of the steps that you may be taking to mitigate future attacks. i mean, would it include putting us troops or marines outside the gates or outside of the airport for additional perimeter, security? and then finally, with all of this, is there any discussion about sending any additional us troops to cobble airport for additional security measures? let me actually answer the last part of your question. first we assess,

we have the forces, we need to protect ourselves there. i'm always in a constant dialogue with a secretary. if i needed anything else, i'll be talking to him immediately. but i think we have what we need to protect ourselves. so let's talk a little bit about the, the restaurants. so very, very real threat streams. very, very what we were told tactical that means imminent could occur at a moment. and they range from rocket attacks. we know that they would like to lock it in there if they could. now we actually have pretty good protection against that . we have our, our and i'm rocket and mortar system, the gun systems that those you, you've been out there are very familiar with that are pretty effective against these kinds of attract. we are well positioned around the boundary. the are feeling we feel that would be we will be in good shape. sure. that kind of attack occur. we also know they aim to get a suicide vehicle born suicide attack in if they can from a small vehicle to a large vehicle. they're working all those options. and then we just seen their ability to deliver a walk in a best wearing a suicide. who aside attackers,

all of those things we look at. now the other thing we do is we share versions of this information with the taliban so that they can actually do some searching out there for us. and we believe that so much and have been forwarded by then. again, we've been doing this for a lot. we've been doing this since the 14th. this is a, this is attack has been carried out. we believe it's possible the others have been thwarted. we should cut down the information we give the child and they don't get the full range of information we have. but we give them enough to act in time and space to try to prevent these attacks. the other thing we try to do is we try to push out the boundary even further. so that there we don't get large crowds massing at the gate clearly. abigail, today we had a larger crowd there that we would like, which goes show you that the system is not perfect, but we have gained large elements of stand all the other gates. and we want to keep that kind of stand off in place. as you know, stand all where tax like this is always the best defense. unfortunately, we just don't have the opportunity given the geography of the, on their own. always gain that trying to stand off. so we say let me close up your

question by saying we take these the threat of these attacks very seriously. ready we're working very hard, we were doing a variety of things we got, as you know, we have age, 64 attack helicopters on the ground that we're flying to take a look, a very good, formal and optical imaging systems. we've got aircraft overhead that also have very good imaging systems. we have unmanned aircraft m tonight that have the ability to look, all of these systems are being applied in defense of the air, feel all about on a continual basis. all of them vector by the intelligence that we receive and that we and then we also use the taliban as a to protect us as much as i'm going to go to the phone to alex horton, marsh. post alex you. they're meeting aged. this is alex wharton with the washington post. thanks for doing this. can you give us a sense of where you are in casualty notification for?

are these folks on the ground? you know how long you take, given that it's a large number? and also can you tell me a little bit about, you know, how the forces have reacted. you said that you and introduced a little probably more staring off at this point. but what are other measures you're taking to increase security after the attack? sure, so i would, i would actually, before i was disciplined notification, it's super light and i, i believe that process is ongoing, but i just, i do not have visibility on my bill ability is fully forward against the data a practical rather we face the theater but there are other people who could probably then answer that question for you. i'm just, i'm just not that person, alex. so in charge of practical things that we're doing. ok again. we've reached out to taliban. we told you need to continue to push out the security forever. we've identified some roads that we would like for them to close day, but then they'll they will be willing to close those roads because we assess the threat of

a suicide born vehicle threat is high right now. so we want to reduce the possibility of one of those vehicles getting close. and so we're actually moving very aggressively to do that. we talked a little bit about the in the over the over watch that we have in place, but i'll review it again. we have our unmanned aircraft, r m tonight, and other unmanned your own systems that have very good optical and other means of looking down. so we look at what's happening around the gate. we try to dinna fi patterns and we got highly trained people to take a look at that. we also have our aircraft that we fly locally. at the age 64 that i mentioned a few moments ago as well as other manned aircraft that come off the u. s. s of the carrier and we have off the market coast as well as us air force aircraft that we bring up from our mountain afghans stands everything ranging from f change to ac, 130 gun ships. and as you know, the ac 130 gunship as a very highly capable targeting system. and it's also very visible platform. and we know, we know from long experience visible demonstration of these kinds of i a sort tends

to dissuade the attacker because they, they know that if we can see him do it, we're going to strike them immediately. so we'll be prepared to do that. should it become necessary to, to defend the base? we're looking very hard, we assess, we are in a period of heightened warning right now. and we're working through that as, as aggressively as we can over. good gordon from your journal. can you tell us if you think that your recommendation for staying potentially after august 31st would change because of the vet stream or are you concerned about the threat stream and also us military and italian. been coordinating very closely on various things. do you still trust the taliban? and is it possible that they let this happen? so as to whether not they let it happen. i don't know. i don't think there's anything to anything to convince me that they let it happen as or whether or not i trust them. that's what, that's not necessarily. that's the word i use very carefully. you've heard me say

before, it's not what they say is what they do. they have a practical reason for wanting us to get out of here by the 31st of august and that's but they want to reclaim they want to climb airfield. we want to get out by that day to if it's going to be possible to do so. so we share a common purpose to that. as long as we kept that common 1st purpose aligned they've been, they've been useful to work with. they've cut some of our security, get some of our security concerns down, and they've been useful to work with going forward. now, long term, i don't know what that's going to be. i will tell you this. anytime you build a non combatant evacuation plan like this, you bring in forces. you expect to be attract. so we expect we, we didn't, we thought this. what happened sooner or later, this tragic that had happened the day is tragic. there was this much lawful life. we are prepared to continue the mission. i've had them up a great opportunity, have dialogue with my chain of command own it and i'm not going to be able to share with you what my advice has been as, as you know and understand gordon. but i think we can continue to conduct our mission, even while we're receiving a tax like this,

or met with the new york times. even before today's attack. you are just 4 days or so from us, from, from leaving. how soon will you have to start diminishing the evacuation place? if indeed those can continue to make space and time for the military retrograde that is the withdrawal from any troops. they're in their equipment to work without getting into specifics. i will tell you that the plan is designed to maximize throughput of the vacuum leaves, even as we begin to prepare to draw down the force on the ground. so we recognize there's a need to balance the 2, so we're not going to get to a point where suddenly when we turn off the spigot, it will draw down as we get closer to the end date. it's not useful for me to share that with you right now when we will begin to draw down those flights. but, but we will do it at some point at same time. i want to emphasize again, a plan is designed to maximize pushing people out, even as we reconfigure the force continue to defend ourselves and get ready to

bring out our own equipment filter it ultimately our own military person. in general, i could just follow up, follow up on that, where you have to also develop alternative routes beyond those that you already have to get the remaining americans in cobbled want to leave safely to the airport . so i would tell you that we have worked over the last week. we abroad in hundreds of americans by working alternate routes to get them in my establishing contact with them by directing them down a steady different ways to get to the airport. our task force, our j sock element, does that on the ground, very effectively and coordination with, with admiral daisley who's the overall commander there. so we continue to do that. that's not something that we're beginning. now we've done that all along, and we will continue to do that. up until the last month, jennifer, jennifer griffin, fox smith, can you say was there one or 2 suicide bombers at the abbe gate? and can you say for certain that it was a male bomber,

and can you give us any more details about the 2nd explosion that occurred at barren hotel was out of the bed. was that a car bomb? or was that also a suicide bomber? finally, the, there are state department employees who are side by side with us marine that gave, were there any other us citizens killed in the attack and why were the marines so close together that so many were killed in $11.00 strike. so we think one suicide bomb at abby gate, don't know if it's met, male or female, just don't have that information. don't don't know much about the 2nd bomb except one went all in the vicinity to barret hotel, which is your aware as deeply bunkered structure. and as far as i know, i know there were no u. k. military casualties. as a result of that, there may have been asking in casualties and i'm sure there were african casualties . well, it will take us a little bit of time to actually learn how many afghans came casually. we took some of them on board,

the installation. many of them were taking the hospitals out in town. so what i see is what i, what i get an open source reporting about the nature of those casualties. but we're, we're, we're, we're trying to gather more information about it. so the last point i would tell you, i don't know, i don't know the size of the bomb and size the bomb is directly related to how many people are going to be affected by the blast radius of the weapons. and so i, we're going to investigate that. as i've noted before, you're at the interface point, they're at these gates, somebody's actually got to watch someone else from the eyes and decide that they're ready to come in. and so we will find out what exactly what happened. but beyond that, i would not want to speculate at this time. jennifer, thank you. any other american citizens from the state department who were killed? none that i'm aware of now. so going to go back to the phones laura seligman. hi darryl. thanks so much for doing this. a couple of questions. first of all, can you tell me we've heard reports of a 3rd and possibly

a force attack in cobbled today. can you confirm those? and then also, can you tell us how exactly are you still conducting these evacuation? what are you concerned about? man pads and other threats to the aircraft. all the cations of other attacks and carnival, but we have not been able to run that information down. so we see it we, we get open source reporting on it, but i can't confirm that there have been other attacks and cobble away from h. try other dates. we continue to take a look at that very hard. i will tell you this, the safety of our aircraft coming in and out is of paramount importance because obviously you have the opportunity there to, for 450 or more people to die. if you have a significant mishap with the aircraft. we know that isis would like to get after those aircraft, if they can, we don't know that they, we don't believe they have a man pad capable of doing it. they have taken shots at our aircraft on occasion without effect. we think that's going to continue. and we will, but as you know,

military aircraft have a variety of self defense systems, which more vulnerable actually are the charter aircraft and other aircraft that are coming in that do not have those, do not have the systems. so we, with our i, sr, we look very carefully at the approach pattern in a departure pattern on that runway to see what we can see if we see any sign of something that might pose a threat to aircraft. that's one of the things that we look at religiously at throughout the day and throughout the night, as we conducted, as we conduct operations, as really the aircraft, the only way we're going to get people out of there. so we are keenly sensitive rest to our aircraft. or just if i can, i'm sorry guys guys, we gotta keep moving to take one more question than give the general chance to close out injuries. sure. i know it's early, but at this moment in time, how do you believe the suicide bombers made it through several check point where there was taller bond or afghan forces to the marine. he believes that he was a failure or they were able to send out, evade them, and make it to the marines. well clearly if you're able to get up to the marines at

the, the screen at the entry point of the base or somewhere, it was a failure by the taliban operate with varying degrees accomplice. some of those guys are very scrupulously good. some of them are not, i just don't know to answer that question and but we will, you can be assured we're going to continue to take a look at it and try to make all our, all our practices better as we go forward. we're going to let the general we're going to lead to general close out general sir, for any closing thought. you might answer a john, thanks again. i would just like to say there is a hard day, but i, i the thing i come back to is. ready remarkable professionalism that the force on the ground is showing. as i've noted before, ultimately at the screening points, in particular, you gotta get very up close and personal to the people that you're bringing out. there is no way to do that safely from a distance in we should all just bear in mind that we've been doing it for a well over a week. we brought 104000 people out as a tremendous number of contacts that every individual rein soldier or sailor has

had to have is we bring people aboard the airfield. i'm a very heavy heart. you know that we, that i, that i do this conversation with you today. nobody feels it more than they are the other members of the chain of command. we'll do everything we can to improve our practices there to make sure it's as safe as possible for our folks on the ground that are doing this 30 dangerous work. john, thanks very much. thank you joe. thank you for shit. you have a question. so general mckenzie that ahead of us central command. speaking from the pentagon, confirming that 12 us service men were killed in the campbell at force attacks 15 others were injured. he said, and it was carried out by 2 suicide bombers from the islamic states. the ice group in afghanistan is that there is a threat of further attacks against the field. of course, the, the gun health ministry also confirmed reports that dozens of afghan, some 60 afghan civilians were killed in the blast. children are thought to be among

the dead and actually one of the bombs exploded on a sewage canal when many families had been waiting in it really. and the police had foul sewage, water in desperate attempts to try reached the airport. so alan fisher is in washington dc. he joins us live now and so on. i mean, the pentagon knew that was a risk of something like this happening. we've just been hearing from the head of us central command, who is in charge of preventing something like this. what did we learn about how this these explosions and this, this loss of life took place? i think the incredible thing is if you stop and take a breath for a 2nd, what we just had was that after 20 years of the us going after the taliban and pounding them and bombing the actual life out of them. they know sharing information with the taliban to try and stop others bombing them at 12 dead,

15 injured, undoubtedly a black day for the u. s. military. what we got was an idea of what happened that throughout this whole process, people have been coming to the gate at the airport. there they have to be frisk. they have to be thoroughly searched to make sure they are not carrying a bomb onto the airfield and then luckily onto an aircraft. this is close up. war said the general mackenzie. any praise the heroism of every single person has to do these searches. you feel the breath of the person next to as you're doing this, he said, and that is the point that he was making, that the way to make the safe is it has to be that close that involved. and in just over a week, he says they've managed to process 104000 people by doing that. what was also interesting is he said the threat has gone away that they're still aware that there will almost certainly be other attacks. know they talked about how they could

prevent rocket attacks, how would they have the ability to try and repair morters attacking the international airport. but they said they don't have the ability to try and walk something such as a truck bomb or another suicide bomb. and that has become abundantly clear in the last couple of hours. the threat is there, it remains and something that the americans have to work with. but general mackenzie also believe that he will get the job done on august the 31st. he was asked to d. think the taliban help let this attack just to be clear, general mackenzie, very clearly blaming i saw k for this attack. he was asked that he think the taliban let this happen. and he pointed out that the taliban actually have an incentive to let this operation continue at the pace. it has been going because they want all foreign fighters out of the country by august. the.