0 >> karen greenburg, thanks so much. that does it for this edition. chuck todd is up next with "mtp daily" only on msnbc. well, don't worry, andrea, you're not going very far. we're coming back to you in a moment. welcome back to "mtp daily." a pair of explosions rocked kabul, have tloefr the u.s. evacuation efforts into turmoil, just five days before president biden's agreed to deadline to get americans out. u.s. officials tell nbc news at least three marines were wounded in the attack outside the airport. hospital officials are treating about 60 people injured and at least six killed. pentagon press secretary john kirby tweeted there were two blasts in what he calls a complex attack. one of those explosions at the abbey gate and the other at a hotel. the briefing he was supposed to have was postponed by events on the ground as was the covid task force briefing. the administration says the president has been briefed on the situation. it is our understanding he is in the oval office after going in and out of the situation room. a taliban spokesman is saying at least 13 were killed, including children. while it is unclear who is responsible for the attack, two u.s. officials say they're operating it was the affiliate of isis. that's what our own intelligence officials were warning about and worrying about. we're going to the pentagon, check in with courtney kube in a moment. richard engle joins me from doha, qatar. the threat was out there a few days. the specific threat from isis-k is something the administration was worried about, publicly warned about, and here it is. this is obviously setting back evacuation efforts. could this essentially end them? >> reporter: no, it couldn't end the evacuation, it shouldn't end the evacuation. it is not an attack of that kind of magnitude. it didn't impact the runways, didn't impact the planes. there were three main gates into the air base. what this was was a horrific attention grabbing suicide attack, complex attack, at least one suicide attack and another bomb right outside the gate, and all indications are this was the work of isis or of a member of isis, and as the taliban rolled into kabul, they set free a lot of prisoners or prisoners in the chaos were able to set themselves free, break out of jail, and these are enemies of the taliban. for the last week or so, they've been roaming free. they've had no place to go. seems at least one or possibly more attackers took the opportunity today to carry out the attack. witnesses are saying and security source in kabul saying that 13 were killed, including several taliban guards who were outside the gate managing the flow of traffic and courtney's reporting, three u.s. marines that were injured. just to bear down a little bit on the geography where it took place because the area around military bases is sometimes quite complicated. you have the air base. we describe it as the military side of the kabul airport. it is a military base surrounded by walls. three main gates into it. by one of the gates there's a hotel, the baron hotel, we stayed there, other journalists stay there, we were there a few days ago. that was built primarily for contractors because it is so close to the airport, that way they could get on and off the airport quickly, safely. from the baron hotel, there's a 200 yard corridor that leads to the abbey gate. one of the gates onto the base. that corridor is flanked with high concrete barriers, and within the corridor there's a deep sewage canal, drainage canal. perhaps using that drainage canal a suicide bomber was able to get to the corridor and detonate an explosive. the images we have seen on social media are absolutely horrific, people, bodies thrown into the sewage canal, some dead bodies, some people who are grateful injured, other people pulling them out of the wastewater. and then ambulances coming in to take the wounded away and try to treat them. it will slow down pace of evacuations because one gate, i wouldn't say it is totally taken out of operation, but it has certainly caused a degree of chaos. they'll try to step up security. they did have a specific threat, seems like that specific threat was carried out. if it was isis, it is isis trying to put themselves back on the map, to do exactly what we're doing now, get them back in the conversation. >> make them a major cog when they shouldn't be treated as one. let me ask you, richard. we know the u.s. military is in charge of securing the airport, the base part of the airport. does that security perimeter, is this within the u.s. security perimeter or is the taliban in charge of security closer to the hotel. >> reporter: the taliban do all of the security, they control afghanistan. it is now the islamic emrat of afghanistan. it is a taliban country except for a mountainous area putting up some say heroic, some say a doomed resistance movement, but the taliban control the country. they are patrolling the outer perimeter, they're controlling check points throughout the city, they're limiting people to get to the airport, they are trying to find isis fighters because they don't want this kind of thing to happen because they want the process to move smoothly and americans to leave. at the gate itself, there is a hand over. i saw that earlier this morning. you drive and it is a bizarre thing to witness. we saw taliban fighters and their guns and traditional dress, some in american style uniforms, you pass them, a few yards later we saw troops from the 82nd airborne, and it is a stark contrast. i must say, the troops i saw, if you could see the expressions on their face, this is before the attack, they were not pleased with the situation. they were not pleased to be doing this evacuation, working a few yards away from their former enemies evacuating the people that worked with american troops and their allies and getting them out of the country, so the taliban control the outer perimeter, americans in the inner perimeter, and the americans are trying to get everybody out, and then this disruption today, a horrible incident at one of the gates. >> richard engle in doha, thank you. let me go to kelly o'donnell at the white house, rob sanchez, andrea mitchell is here with me in the bureau, military analyst colonel jack jacobs, and national security analyst clint watts. this is basically cancel anything else today, this is the focus of the administration, this is disruption in evacuation plans. i'm sure we don't have the answer to this, is essentially this national security meeting, constant meeting happening with the president, about now what, what do we do now, can we still meet this deadline, do we try to extend, how do we secure the area. do you have any scope of the discussions going on inside? >> the word of the day is fluid. everything related to the president is fluid, who he is meeting with, what his schedule looks like, will we see him publicly, all of that. as to the question of the calculation the president needs to make, an event like is playing out with all its gory, deadly awfulness is one of the factors that the president said needed to be part of his decision-making process about evacuations. the possibility which at that time was a threat stream of warnings, could that disrupt evacuations and what would they need to do to complete the mission of securing all americans who want to leave afghanistan, the number still at this point is somewhere roughly a thousand, not all of them determined to be american citizens who want to leave. that's the latest numbers we have there. then how does that factor into the deadline of august 31st. we've been told the president has been briefed on contingency plans, that had taken place before today's event. he spent an ex-tense if amount of time in the situation room with the defense secretary, national security team. we are told us in the oval office now. and the real challenge for the president is when this began, this evacuation began, and there was the initial chaos when the taliban took over and kabul fell, civilian deaths at the beginning, then the administration was proud of the ramp up of evacuations being done safely, the president noting no one had died, and then today, the concern about the threat being there, urging americans to leave, and events that unfolded where there are clearly lots of injuries, at least three americans included in the injury tally. don't know how much further that will go, and the worst news could come. now we are back to the situation where the president has a different dynamic. does he need additional force protection, work with troops on the ground, and can he evacuate all of the embassy personnel and all the others in time. we don't have the answers but imagine having to work through those decisions with contingencies and with the difficult situation now. the president has a real burden on his plate. he made some of these choices, some are controlled by outside events. chuck? >> kelly o'donnell at the white house, thank you. let me go to the pentagon. hit the main check points. let's go to the pentagon, courtney kube. do we have any new information or details on the attacks themselves? do we have more information, finding out more details of who is wounded, are americans part of the casualty count. what more information have you got? >> americans are part of the casualty count. the military includes casualty to be wounded and killed. what we know so far is there were three u.s. marines that were injured. we are trying to work on whether there may have been any u.s. military killed as well, and we're still working through that at this point. obviously that's something we take seriously and don't want to get wrong. we are working hard to figure out the ground truth. we know there were a number of afghans injured and killed. the video and pictures we are seeing on social media are tough to watch. seems as if these are two large explosions, one at the abbey gate, and one at the nearby baron hotel, a hotel frequented by westerners, particularly americans and british for a long time, and even after the taliban took over kabul. we know there were at least two explosions. the u.s. was concerned about the potential for suicide attacks at that location and other gates around the airport, particularly there was a threat, a specific intelligence stream that warned about isis-k, isis khorasan, that they were trying to carry out attacks at the airport. everything is pointing that direction at this point, chuck. >> courtney, if the president made the decision he needed more reinforcements to finish the evacuation, how quickly. the pentagon was staging folks in kuwait before preparing for the extra troops they ended up having to call up before. is that one of the contingency plans? >> when they announced deployment of additional troops, the pentagon announced they would be sending three battalions or one brigade combat team. 82nd airborne, immediate reaction force, a group supposed to be ready to go on hours-long notice to go pretty much anywhere in the world they need them. they sent those three battalions forward, all three were rerouted from kuwait to kabul. that gives you a sense this was more than a week ago, all went straight to kabul. if the u.s. wanted to shore up security at the airport, they could send additional troops in. the reality is they can get troops pretty quickly. there are other marines as part of the special purpose marine air ground task force, they can go in, many are trained for embassy security and kinds of situations they might be facing at the airport. could get people in quickly. i have to stress, at this point we are not hearing indications that's in the works. >> of course. i just -- we know they're working through different scenarios, and obviously that would be something that would be a bit of a tell if we saw it there. courtney, thank you. let's go over to andrea mitchell, among her beats, the state department. hang on, andrea. kelly, you have a news update for us. >> i don't mean to step on our colleagues at the pentagon. john kirby now says we can confirm a number of u.s. service members were killed in today's complex attack at kabul airport. a number of others are being treated for wounds. we also know that a number of afghans fell victim to this heinous attack. our thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones and teammates of all those killed and injured. the worst news. americans among the dead. we have not heard from the president yet. this is a statement from john kirby, spokesman at the pentagon. chuck? >> kelly, thank you for alerting us to kirby's tweet. american service members are among those that died in the attack. andrea mitchell, what is the plan c, d, and e that the state department is thinking trying to get the remaining americans out, trying to get afghan allies out. obviously the gates are sitting targets. it is something clearly our own folks were concerned about, warnings were out there. there's not, are they going to have to helicopter people onto the runway? >> exactly. i think first, let me just say, the fact that we first heard marines were injured, now we heard that there were americans killed, we don't know who or how many, that is just the worst possible tragedy obviously. this is going to bear heavily on the president and any decisions he makes. he said he wants to get all of the americans out. i think that getting people into the airport as difficult as it may be, there can be helicopter movements which if they identify people, those identified, as of yesterday, a thousand they were still trying to get in touch with. 500 we believe were already in the airport, if not evacuated safely already. so we are talking about a thousand people that were known to be americans, still in afghanistan, who had not said we want to stay. that was the other cohort, there could be people, they're having great difficulty with that number. the difficulty could be helicopter and other movements trying to create some secure zones, but that's going to take awhile, with the cooperation of the taliban, presuming they were not complicit in this in any way, wouldn't seem they have an interest, but h.r. mcmaster is vigorous suspecting the motives of every one of these groups, thinking the hakani network, leader of that network from pakistan, showing up in kabul, a member of the taliban leadership, showing up in kabul last week, being told, we were told he was going to be in charges of kabul security. he showed up at friday prayers publicly. he is on the fbi most wanted list as a terrorist. he is not the same as the taliban who they have been negotiating with, at least in terms of the way the state department is dealing with it, the way the white house is dealing with it. this is a mess and it is a terrible resurgence of terror from groups like al qaeda and parts of hakani. >> americans were told, the state department put out a briefing, do not go to these gates. they put out that warning. clearly they were worried. i guess one up side is our intelligence was pretty sound on this. what are americans being told to do now? just shelter in place until they hear from the state department or somebody else in government about where to go and when to go and how to go? >> precisely. and what we know is these were service members. we don't know about american civilians that may have been injured or killed in the terrible attacks today, but there were plenty of afghan civilians, saw that from videos earlier. they were desperate afghans trying to get to the airport. why they didn't know of state department warnings, or believing they were so desperate to get out, they were taking the risk of being in a crowd, even though u.s. warnings were clear not to be in that crowd. the tragedy is that these are service members on the perimeter working with the taliban. there's got to be after action, of course, immediately as to how much the taliban did or did not know about this, and whether any of our assumptions have been misleading about relying on them as much as we were through our own leaders, general mackenzie and other military, using them and their acceptance of all of this in order to continue the evacuations. i do not see a lengthy extension past august 31st. if it is a day or two, but not much longer. >> andrea, stick around. don't go anywhere. we have been covering this mostly from the american government point of view, what we are hearing from the american side. i want to go to raf sanchez monitoring the european side. any new information, new intelligence that our european allies surfaced on the attack, anything more you learned from your end? >> chuck, there's no indication now from any of the coalition allies that their service members were caught up in this attack which we now know killed americans. we heard from the british, from the italians, turks, germans that none of their service members were harmed. there are about a thousand uk troops at hamid karzai airport. the british had the second largest number of western troops in afghanistan over the course of the 20 year war. second largest number of troops today. it is early evening. this morning, the government began to sound the alarm you are jeptly that there was threat of imminent and lethal explosion at kabul airport. this was not a general expression of concern, this was a very, very serious sounding of the alarm, and within a few hours of a british minister going on television and warning about this, that explosion came through. clearly there's been intelligence shared among different allies nations about this possibility. british and other allies tried and failed to convince president biden to extend the deadline beyond august 31st for keeping u.s. troops in the country. when the americans go, other allies are going to go with them. they cannot stay on the ground without u.s. support. we are beginning to see the other allies bringing an end to their evacuation efforts. the last canadian and german flights have gone out today and the british are saying they'll begin to wind up too. >> raf sanchez in london, thank you. i appreciate the update. let's get more on the logistics of finishing the evacuation with colonel jacobs, one more on isis-k and the intelligence side. clint watts to cover that. jack, let me start with you. now you're dealing with a known security, clearly a security problem there, getting folks that get cued up to get evacuated. what kind of military options is the president being offered by military advisers to finish the job here? is it more reinforcements, is it change in how we get folks inside the airport perimeter? what are the various options he is being handed by military advisers. >> typically what happens, chiefs will give him as many options as they can think of, including sending lots more troops to secure the area. accelerate the withdrawal with more planes and other people inside afghanistan. a wide variety of options from the ridiculous to sublime. and then they'll make a recommendation. recommendation is likely can't send more troops, that will make the final evacuation of troops much more difficult, but we'd like to see, joint chiefs talking, we'd like to see an extension of deadline of the 31st of august because we're not going to be able to get everybody out by then. this is a real logistical problem. roll the tape forward. even absent the horrendous attack today that slowed everything down, think about what it is going to take to get everybody out that's remaining there, particularly troops. as you withdraw troops, those on the ground are smaller and smaller, less capable of defending themselves. the detachment left in contact, soldiers, sailors, were left behind at the end, going out on the last plane are most at risk, how are you going to protect them. with air strikes, overwatch and all the rest of that, at the end of the day some credence has to be giv