The United States carried out a missile strike on Islamic State militants in Kabul on Sunday, U.S. officials said, as its forces at the capital's airport worked to complete a withdrawal that will end two decades of involvement in Afghanistan.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the strike targeted suspected ISIS-K terrorists, a group that is an enemy of both the West and the Taliban and was responsible for a suicide bomb attack outside the airport gates on Thursday.
A loud blast was heard in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday by AFP journalists, hours after US officials warned of the possibility of a terror attack.
A security official from the recently deposed government told AFP it was a rocket that "initial information shows hit a house".
US military commanders believe that another terror attack like the deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport is "highly likely in the next 24-36 hours," President Joe Biden warned Saturday.
The United States took aim at the ISIS group in Afghanistan on Saturday, killing two high-level targets in a drone strike over the devastating suicide bombing at Kabul airport, as President Joe Biden warned another attack on the frantic airlift was "highly likely".
A series of urgent terror warnings have rattled evacuation efforts overseen by US forces, who have been forced into closer security cooperation with the Taliban to prevent a repeat of Thursday's carnage at one of the facility's main access gates.
Scores of Afghan civilians were killed in the bombing claimed by the regional ISIS-Khorasan group, along with 13 US troops -- several of them just 20 years old, the same length of time as US military operations in Afghanistan.
But Biden said Saturday that his military commanders believed a fresh attack could come "in the next 24-36 hours", calling the situation "extremely dangerous". "I directed them to take every possible measure to prioritize force protection," he said after a briefing from his national security team.
Here are the highlights on Afghanistan-Taliban crisis:
Foreign ministers from several countries will meet virtually Monday to discuss their next steps in Afghanistan, the US State Department said, as the airlift evacuation out of the country enters its final days. Read Here
The Taliban will allow all foreign nationals and Afghan citizens with travel authorisation from another country to leave Afghanistan, according to a joint statement issued by Britain, the United States and other countries. Read Here
The Taliban's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada -- who has never made a public appearance and whose whereabouts have largely remained unknown -- is in Afghanistan, the hardline Islamist group confirmed on Sunday.
"He is present in Kandahar. He has been living there from the very beginning," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
"He will soon appear in public," added deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi.
US President Joe Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday morning, where he is to pay respects to the 13 service members who were killed in Kabul in an attack earlier in the week.
Biden and his wife, Jill, "will meet with the families of fallen American service members who gave their lives to save Americans, our partners, and our Afghan allies in Kabul," ahead of a transfer of the remains, according to the president's daily schedule.
Only 300 American citizens still in Afghanistan are seeking to leave the country, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday, just days ahead of the US deadline for evacuations.
"We are down to a population of 300 or fewer Americans who are still on the ground there, and we are working actively in these hours and these days to get those folks out," he told ABC.
The resistance forces in the Panjshir province on Saturday rejected the Taliban claims that their forces entered Panjshir province from various directions.
Ahmad Massoud supporters rejected the claims of a Taliban advance toward Panjshir and say no one has entered the province, reported Tolo News.
"There is no fight in Panjshir and no one has entered the province," said Mohammad Almas Zahid, head of the Resistance Front delegation.
Earlier, the Taliban claimed that their forces entered Panjshir province.
US forces are in the final phase of leaving Kabul, ending two decades of involvement in Afghanistan, and just over 1,000 civilians at the airport remain to be flown out before troops withdraw, a Western security official said on Sunday.
The country's new Taliban rulers are prepared to take control of the airport, said an official from the hardline Islamist movement that has swept cross Afghanistan, crushing the U.S.-backed government.
The United Nations Security Council has dropped the Taliban reference from a paragraph in its statement on terrorist attacks near Kabul airport that called on Afghan groups not to support terrorists "operating on the territory of any other country".
India, which assumed the rotating Presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the month of August, signed off on the statement and issued it in its capacity as the chair for this month.
A band of veteran Afghan leaders, including two regional strongmen, are angling for talks with the Taliban and plan to meet within weeks to form a new front for holding negotiations on the country's next government, a member of a group said.
Khalid Noor, son of Atta Mohammad Noor, the once-powerful governor of northern Afghanistan's Balkh province, said the group comprised of veteran ethnic Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum and others opposed to the Taliban's takeover.
"We prefer to negotiate collectively, because it is not that the problem of Afghanistan will be solved just by one of us," Noor, 27, told Reuters in an interview from an undisclosed location.
Suicide bomb threats hung over the final phase of the US military's airlift operation from Kabul Sunday, with President Joe Biden warning another attack was highly likely before the evacuations end.
