“I warned them against interfering in our evacuation and made it clear to them that any attack would be met with overwhelming force to defend our forces,” McKenzie said. “Protecting American civilians and our partners is a top priority for me and we will take all necessary steps to ensure a safe and effective withdrawal.” Thousands of Afghans are still arriving at Hamid Karzai International Airport, desperately trying to board evacuation flights. Many have to run the glove of Taliban checkpoints to reach the gates. Up to 20 people were killed while trying to enter the airport, either because of gunshot wounds when the U.S. military and Taliban fired into the air to control the crowd, or crushed as the crowd flocked to enter the airport. Biden said he wanted the evacuation to take place by Sept. 31. ==References==Sullivan declined to say whether this deadline would be maintained. The goal is to increase to one evacuation flight per hour by Wednesday, with 5,000 to 9,000 evacuees leaving per day, Taylor and Kirby said. Taylor said more than 4,000 U.S. troops are now at the airport.

That number is expected to exceed 6,000 in the coming days — more than twice as many as in all of Afghanistan when Biden announced in April that he would end the U.S. war and withdraw all troops. Kirby said the U.S. would send yet another battalion to try to secure the airport, but said the total number of U.S. operations planned to secure evacuations through the airport would remain at 6,000. He did not give details. The Taliban have agreed to the terms of the “deconfliction mechanism” and will allow evacuations from Kabul airport, The Associated Press reported. Sullivan acknowledged that some civilians encountered resistance – “turned away, pushed back or even beaten” – when they tried to reach Kabul International Airport.

But he said “very large numbers” have reached the airport and the problem of others with the Taliban has been resolved, whose surprisingly rapid takeover of the country on Sunday plunged U.S. evacuation efforts into chaos, confusion and violence. He said there had been no hostile actions by the Taliban and that several hundred members of the now defeated Afghan army were at the airport to help with the evacuation. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said U.S. officers had spoken with Taliban commanders “several times a day” to avoid conflict at the airport. This suggested that Afghanistan`s new leaders, who came to power after 20 years of war against the US-backed government in Kabul, plan not to disrupt the evacuation. Kirby declined to go into details of the Taliban`s arrangement, and Sullivan said the question of how long the Taliban will give to the evacuation is still under negotiation. ==External links==Reached an agreement with the Taliban to ensure that evacuations from Kabul airport could take place without group interference, according to an Associated Press report. The Taliban and the international community must urgently reach an agreement to extend the 31 August deadline to complete evacuations from Afghanistan, Amnesty International said today to protect thousands of Afghans increasingly exposed to violent reprisal attacks.

The United States, along with 97 other countries, announced on Sunday that it had reached an agreement with the Taliban that would allow it to continue to pull Afghan allies out of the country after the August 31 withdrawal deadline. Thousands of people, including journalists, former government officials and civil society activists, struggled to board the last flights leaving the Afghan capital`s besieged international airport ahead of the deadline for the Western evacuation operation. “And we will accelerate the evacuation of thousands of Afghans eligible for special U.S. immigrant visas, nearly 2,000 of whom have already arrived in the U.S. in the past two weeks.” The State Department said it was sending John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, to lead the evacuation operation in Kabul, and the Pentagon said it would send an army major.