On Thursday, the Pentagon acknowledged an explosion at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport, where Western soldiers are rushing to evacuate as many people as possible.
According to John Kirby, the Pentagon's top spokesperson, it was unclear whether there were any casualties.
President Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion, according to a White House official.
The latest information comes only hours after the US Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert advising Americans to avoid the Kabul airport.
The message stated that “U.S. citizens who are currently at the Abbey Gate, East Gate, or North Gate should leave immediately.”
In the previous 24 hours, Western forces have flown 91 military cargo planes out of Kabul, evacuating 13,400 civilians. Around 95,700 individuals have been evacuated out of Afghanistan since the mass evacuations began on August 14.
Since the end of July, roughly 101,300 people have been evacuated, including about 4,500 Americans and their families.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated on Wednesday that there could be as many as 1,500 Americans remaining to evacuate in Afghanistan, a figure he described as "difficult to pin down with absolute precision at any given moment."
The US is currently “aggressively reaching out” to approximately 1,000 contacts “multiple times a day, through multiple channels of communication” to discover if they still want to leave and to provide them advice on how to do so, according to the country's top diplomat.
The true figure, according to Blinken, could be smaller.
Biden told leaders of the G-7, NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union on Tuesday that the US military will leave Afghanistan by the end of the month.
Longer stays in Afghanistan, according to the president, might pose major threats to international troops and civilians. ISIS-K, an Afghan branch of the terror group, poses a grave threat to the airport, according to Biden.
“Every day we're on the ground, we know ISIS-K is planning an attack on the airport, targeting both US and allied forces as well as innocent civilians,” he stated.
With roughly 200 US military planes dedicated to the mission, about 5,400 US servicemembers are assisting with evacuation efforts.
The Taliban announced earlier Tuesday that they will no longer allow Afghan people to leave the country on evacuation aircraft and that they will not accept a deadline extension beyond the end of the month.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, "We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave."
“They [the Americans] have the opportunity, they have all the resources, they can take all the people who belong to them,” he continued, “but we will not allow Afghans to leave, and we will not extend the deadline.” Foreign forces evacuating the country after August 31 would be a "violation" of a Biden administration vow to end the US military operation in the country, Mujahid said.
