US evacuations are slowing down due to bottlenecks at bases, according to the Pentagon.

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The Pentagon has evacuated 13,400 people from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in the past 24 hours, military officials said Thursday, a steep drop from recent days, in large part because reception bases at Kabul. Middle East is filling up again. Of that 24-hour total, coalition flights carried 8,300 passengers, about as many as in recent days.

But the number of US military flights on Thursday fell to 17, carrying 5,100 people, from 42 military flights carrying 11,200 people the day before, a military official said. Military officials attributed the drop largely to bottlenecks at bases like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where officials take up to 12 hours to check incoming Afghans against US watch lists. of the fight against terrorism.

The massive civilian airlift will continue until President Biden’s August 31 deadline for withdrawing US forces, Pentagon chief spokesman John F. Kirby said on Wednesday, but the mission was still complicated by at least two explosions. Thursday outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, just hours after Western governments warned of a security threat.

About 5,400 US troops are now at the airport after 400 non-evacuation essentials have left the country in recent days, Kirby said.

Over the past few days, the military and its foreign partners had transported around 20,000 people a day as the military operation rushed to transport as many Americans and Afghan allies as possible before the August 31 deadline.

Thursday’s 13,400 new evacuations brought the total since the Taliban took over the city to 95,700.

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