out by an isis cell. there had been warnings about it for days and why the state department told americans to not come to those gates last night to evacuate those gates. americans and other afghans are told to leave those gates. they will not get into those gates at this point. in terms of casualties, i myself have seen video where i could count at least a dozen dead afghan civilians outside the abbey gate. it was heartrending, the lifeless bodies, women, children, the taliban are saying at least 13 dead. we know from tolo news reports of casualties coming to the surgical center in kabul. 30 casualties have arrived. among those six dead. the casualty figures will rise. i can tell you from the video i saw, i haven t seen that kind of blood shed in a long time and it is devastating. we do know this is from our
into afghanistan and we don t know if it s cash or equipment. we don t know what that would be. what we know their internet is up and running in taliban country. and so all of that is on servers that we don t control. i couldn t speak to the security of the encryption and the state department has not said anything to that event. something that is important having spent some time in war zones such as this is we don t have the human intelligence outside of that airport to go and get americans nor to give us the intelligence in realtime. we re in a fluid inflection point right now with the president committed to that withdrawal and clearly dependent upon a taliban government entirely in control of kabul. they re holding all the cards. at this point we ve received no information that the taliban is either acknowledging nor doing anything to help us in this situation, which has left
footprint of special operations counter terrorism focused troops in afghanistan through all of this and if we would have kept the bagram airfield open rather than rely on the very inefficient kabul public airport. this situation could have unfolded more effectively and in a much much better way than it has. we ll get back to the asking those questions later. in the meantime we have to get all these americans out of country and i don t have the confidence this administration is able to do that. harris: so congressman quickly because you can talk tactics with us now and with some specificity. every american is wondering if we were there, what would we be doing? we are getting mixed messages on the ground. we re being told to get to the airport and now the airport is too dangerous to get to. you have people in other parts of the country can t get there. if we pull up stakes do we have to go back in with a bigger
we re talking about american citizens, american green card holders, afghan nationals who have helped us, fought alongside our soldiers. they lost over 60,000 soldiers in the 20-year conflict. we ve lossed 2500 soldiers in the conflict. as you point out we have american military members right there on the ground right now heroes going to try to save these lives of americans and afghan allies all in harm s way. they are congregating at the gates where they are being let into the airport. thousands of people at various gates around the airport. i don t want to describe which gates people are at. but i will say this. there are taliban checkpoints all around the airport that you have to proceed through just to get to the gates that they are being advised to go to. at times they re being told draw back from the gates, step back. they are told if you want to get out of the country before withdrawal happens you have to go to the gates. there is a tension.
evacuation and it really sets a big question right now what does the biden administration do with the thousands of u.s. troops still there? and what do they do with the more than 1,000 americans who are on the ground not only stranded in kabul, but across the rest of the country? the second explosion location at the barron hotel was where many foreigners were staying, including americans. you might remember last friday when that first public operation was conducted by american forces, 169 people rescued from the barron hotel. reports indicate that s the site of one of these explosions. there are likely foreigners involved in the injuries from these attacks and certainly concern to the u.s. troops who are stuck right now not only in taliban territory but now at the scene of two major blasts. harris: a lot of information there and so much more coming in. trey yingst. we ll check back with you as the news warrants.