0 >> officials believe isis-k was behind the attacks, but they're still working to confirm that. the state department had been warning for days of a terror attack at the airport. we have reporters standing by. let's start with barbara starr at the pentagon. what do we know about these military members who were killed and what we're expected to hear from the pentagon? >> in just a very short while we are expecting to hear from general frank mckenzie, the head of the u.s. central command which oversees military operations in the gulf, the middle east, afghanistan. we expect to hear from him. i see john kirby there. >> the general will have some brief opening remarks. we'll obviously address the events in kabul today as well as the evacuation mission and where we are and where we're going. we'll take questions. i will moderate the questions. i will call on you. please before you ask your question identify yourselves and your outlet so the general has an idea who he's talking to. just a reminder, we have a hard stop at 3:30. with that, general mckenzie, over to you sir. >> thanks. it's a hard day today. as you know, two suicide bombers assessed to have been isis fightered detonated at the abbey gate followed by a number of isis gunman who opened fire on civilians and military forces. at this time we know that 12 u.s. service members have been killed in the attack and 15 more service members have been injured. a number of afghan civilians were also killed and injured in the attack. we are heading some of them aboard hkia. we continue to focus on the protection of our forces and the evacuees as the evacuation continues. let me be clear. while we're saddened by the loss of life, both u.s. and afghan, we're continuing to execute the mission. our mission is to evacuate u.s. citizens, third country nationals, special immigrant visa holders, u.s. embassy staff and afghans at risk. as of today we have 5,000 evacuees on the ramp awaiting air left. since august 14th we've evacuated more than 104,000 civilians, over 6,000 by the united states and over 37,000 by our allies and partners. that includes bringing out about 5,000 americans. the secretary of state said yesterday we believe there are about a little more than a thousands americans left in afghanistan at this point. we're going everything we can to reach out to them and help them leave if they want to leave. remember, not everybody wants to leave. yesterday we brought in over 500 american citizens. it would be difficult to overestimate the number of unusual challenges and competing demands that our forces on the ground have faced. the threat to our forces, particularly from isis-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 our forces have over come those challenges and the number of people we've been able to extract from afghanistan. it would be remiss of me not to mention the contributions of our many coalition partners. they stood with us on the ground. and also the international partners who supported the evacuation, the service members who supported this operation down range across the central command, the european command and northern command areas of responsibility. moreover, this evacuation could not have been done without the amazing flexibility of u.s. transportation command and the air lift provided by the united states air force. no other military in the world has anything like it. i'd also like to thank the host nations that have generally provided access to their facilities for the care of evacuees. i also acknowledge the temporary suffering some of our evacuees have had to endure. we continue to execute our number one mission, which is to get as many evacuees and citizens out of afghanistan. we also extend the capacity at our intermediate facilities to ensure safe, sanitary and humane conditions for our evacuees while continuing to look for ways to expedite their processing to the united states and other destinations. i'd like to close by taking a moment to describe the heroism that our marines, soldiers and sailors are exhibiting as they screen the people coming onto the airfield. this is closeup work. the breath of the person you are searching is upon you. while we have overwatch in place, we still have to touch the clothes of the person coming in. i think you all can appreciate the courage and dedication necessary to do this job and to do it time after time. please remember that we have screened over 104,000 people. finally i'd like to offer my profound condolences to the families of oh our servicemen and women and afghan civilians who lost their lives today. we have put more than 5,000 u.s. service members at risk to save as many civilians as we can. it's a noble mission. today we have seen firsthand 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 the men and women of the armed forces who are facing these dangers head on with their int international partners and all other friends with us. we appreciate your thoughts for all the service members today who are carrying out this mission. >> general mckenzie, thank you for taking the time to do this. can you give us your assessment of the isis 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 onto the airport now? finally, the president has warned that any attacks against the u.s. would be answered. will this attack be answered militarily by the u.s.? >> a number of questions there. let me try to take them in order. first of all, the threat from isis is extremely real. we've been talking about it for several days. we saw it manifest in the last few hours with an actual attack. we believe it is their desire to continue those attacks and we expect those attacks to continue. we're doing everything we can to prevent those attacks. we are continuing to bring people onto the airfield. we just brought a number of buses aboard the airfield over the last couple or three hours. we'll don't continue to process flow people out. the plan is designed to operate under stress and under attack. and we will coordinate to make sure it's safe for american citizens to come to the airfield. if it's not, we'll tell them to hold and work other ways to get them to the airport. we'll continue to flow them out until the end of the month. let me just come back one moment. 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 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 is associated with this cowardly another tack and we're prepared to take action against them. 24/7 we are looking for them. >> david? >> 27 casualties is a terrible number, 12 dead. can you explain the circumstances of these attacks which resulted in such high casualties for the u.s.? >> sure, david. first 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. the gate we have to check people before they get onto the airfield. we have to ep nsure they're not carrying a bomb or weapon. that requires physical screening. you have to get very close to that person. the air base itself is surr surrounded with walls. these gates where people actually come on the airfield, there's no substitute for a young united states man or woman standing up there, conducting a search of that person before we let them on. the taliban have conducted searches before they get to that point and sometimes those searches have been good and sometimes not. i will simply note before this attack we had passed 104,000 people through. this attack is one too many but we'll evaluate what happened. we'll find ways to always get better. but the key thing is you don't want someone on an airplane carrying a bomb because that could result in massive loss of life if an airplane were to be destroyed. you've got to do the searches. we work with our partners on the ground to conduct those searches. ultimately americans have got to be endangered to secure these searches. i cannot tell you how impressed i am with the daily heroism of the men and women out there doing that work. they're right up close to thousands of people flowing through the airfield. to be able to get up and do it day after day is remarkable. this time looks like somebody got close to us. we'll find out why and try to improve our procedures. 12 service members dying, no one feels that more closely than me and everyone in the chain of command. we realize we need to continue to evaluate our procedures as we go forward. we're not there to defend ourselves. we're there to defend ourselves while we process american citizens first but also the other categories of people that i mentioned, get them to a place where we can fly them out to a safer, better future. >> just to be clear, this suicide bomber was going through the gate, being searched, checked by u.s. service members when he detonated his vest? >> that would be my working assumption. he did not get onto the installation. it was at the interface point where this attack occurred. we're gathering information. we're investigating that. but right now our focus really, we have other active threat streams. our focus is on that. over the next days we'll learn more about what happened here and i'm sure we'll be able to share that with you. right now our focus is going forward and ensuring another attack of this nature tuz not occur. typically the pattern is multiple attacks and we want to be prepared to defend against that. >> courtney? >> it's courtney kube from nbc news. can you tell us a little bit more about these extremely real additional threats from isis? is it a concern about more suicide attacks? also about some of the steps that you may be taking to mitigate future attacks. would it include putting u.s. troops or marines outside the gates outside of the airport for additional perimeter security? finally, with all of this, is there any discussion about sending any additional u.s. troops to kabul airport for additional security measures? >> let me answer the last part of your question first. we assess we have the forces we need to protect ourselves there. let's talk about the threat streams. so very, very real threat streams, very, very what we would call tactical. that means imminent, could occur at any moment. they range from rocket attacks. we know they would like to lob a rocket in there if they could. we have pretty good protection against that. we have our anti-rocket and mortar systems, the gun systems that are pretty effective against these kinds of attacks. we have them well positioned around the boundary of the airfield. we also know they'd like to get a vehicle attack if they can, from a small vehicle to a large vehicle. we've already seen a vest wearing suicide attacker. all of those things we look at. now, the other thing we do is, we share versions of this information with the taliban so they can actually do some searching out there for us. we believe some attacks have been thwarted by them. we've been doing this since the 14th. this is an attack that's been carried out. we believe it's possible others have been thwarted. we cut down the information we give the taliban. they don't get the full range of information we have, but we give them enough to try to prevent these attacks. we try to push out the boundary even further so we don't get large crowds massing at the gate. clearly at abbey gate we had a larger crowd than we would like. it shows the system is not perfect. standoff for attacks like this is always the best defense. unfortunately we don't have the opportunity given the geography of the ground that we're onto always gain that kind of standoff. let me close your question by saying we take the threat of these attacks very seriously. we're working them very hard. we're doing a variety of things. as you know we have attacking helicopters on the ground that we're flying to take a look. they have very good thermal and optical imaging systems. we have aircraft over head that also have good imaging systems. we have mq-9s that have the ability to look. all of these systems are being deployed in defense of the airfa air airfield. we also use the taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible. >> alex horton, "washington post" on the phone. alex? >> alex horton with the "washington post." can you give us a sense of where you are in casualty notification f given the large number? and can you tell us a little bit about how the forces have reacted? you said you introduced a little probably more standoff at this point, but what are other measures you're taken to increase security after the attack? >> sure. i believe that process is ongoing, but i do not have visibility on it. my visibility is fully forward against the day to day practical threat we face. there are other people probably that can answer that question for you. i'm just not that person, alex. in terms of practical things we're doing, again, we've reached out to the taliban, we've told them you need to push out the security perimeter. we've identified some roads we'd like them to close. they say they will be willing to close those roads because we think the vehicle threat is high right now. we're moving very aggressively to do that. we talked a little bit about the over watch that we have in place. we have our unmanned aircraft, our mq-9s and other unmanned drone systems that have very good optical and other means of looking down. we look at what's happening around the gate, we try to identify patterns. we have mhighly trained people looking at that. we also have aircraft we fly locally as well as other aircraft that come off the air y carrier we have off the coast, everything ranging from f 15s to ac-130 gunships. the gunship has a very capable targeting system. we know visible demonstration of these kinds of isr tends to dissuade the attack. they know if we can see them do it, we're going to strike them immediately. we're looking very hard. we assess we are in a period wd we're working through that as aggressively as we can. >> can you tell us if you think that your recommendation for staying potentially after august 31st would change because of this threat stream? or are you concerned about the threat stream? also u.s. military and the taliban have been coordinating very closely on various things. do you still trust the taliban and is it possible they let this happen? >> as to whether they let it happen, i don't know. i don't think there's anything to convince me they let it happen. as to whether or not i trust them, that's not necessarily -- that's a word i use very carefully. it's not what they say. it's what they do. they have a practical reason for wanting us to get out of here by the 31st of august. they want to reclaim the airfield. we want to get out by then too if it's possible to do so. we share a common purpose. they've been useful to work with. they've cut some of our security concerns down and they've been useful to work with going forward. long-term, i don't know what that's going to be. any time you build a noncombatant evacuation plan like this and you bring in forces, you expect to be attacked. we thought this would happen sooner or later. it's tragic that happened today. it's tragic there's this much loss of life. we are prepared to continue the mission. i think we can continue to conduct our mission even while we're receiving attacks like this. >> even before today's attack you were just four days or so from leaving. how soon will you have to start diminishing the evacuation flights if you believe those can continue to make space and time for the military retrograde that is the withdrawal of the many troops there and our equipment? >> without getting into specifics, i would tell you the plan is designed to maximize throughput of evacuees even as we again to prepare to draw down the force on the ground. we recognize there's a need to balance the two. we're not going to suddenly turn off the spigot. it will draw down as we get closer to the air gate. at the same time, i want to emphasize again a plan is designed to maximize pushing people out even as we continue to reconfigure the force, continue to defend ourselves and get out our equipment and military personnel. >> will you also have to develop alternative routes to get the remaining americans in kabul who want to leave safely to the airport? >> we have worked over the last week. we have brought in hundreds of americans by working alternate routes to get them in, by establishing contact with them, by directing them down different ways to get to the airport. our task force does that on the ground very effectively in connection with the overall commander there. so we continue to do that. that's not something we're beginning now. we have done that all along and will continue to up until the last moment. >> jennifer griffin, fox news. >> can you say was there one or two suicide bombers at the abbey gate? and can you say for certain it was a male bomber? and can you give us any more details about the second explosion that occurred at baron hotel? was that a car bomb or also a suicide bomber? finally, there are state department employees side by side with u.s. military at that gate. were there any other killed in one strike? >> we think one suicide bomb at abbey gate. don't know if it's male or female. just don't have that information. don't know much about the second bomb except one went off in the vicinity of the baron hotel, which you are aware is a deeply bunkered structure. as far as i know, there were no u.k. military casualties as a result of that. there may have been afghan casualties and i'm sure there were afghan casualties. but it will take us a little bit of time to actually learn how many afghans became casualties. we took some of them on board the installation. many of them were taken to hospitals out in town. what i see is what i get on open source reporting about the nature of those casualties. we're trying to gather more information about it. last point, i would tell you i don't know the size of the bomb. the size of the bomb is directly related to how many people are going to be affected by the blast raid i didius of the weap. we're going to investigate that. at the interface point at the gates, someone has to look someone else in the eyes and decide they're ready to come in. we'll find out exactly what happened 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 than i am aware of now. >> go back to the phones. >> thank you so much for doing this. a couple questions. first of all, can you tell me we've heard reports of a third and possibly a fourth attack in kabul today. can you confirm those? and also can you tell us how exactly are you still conducting these evacuation flights? are you concerned about man pads and other threats to the aircraft? >> we have not been able to run that information down as far as locations of other attacks in kabul. i can't confirm there have been other attacks in kabul away from h kaya today. i will tell you this. the safety of our aircraft coming in and out is of paramount importance. you have the opportunity for 450 or more people to die. 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. as you know, military aircraft have a variety of self-defense systems. what's more vulnerable are the charter aircraft that do not have those sys