US fully evacuates Kabul embassy within 72 hours – CNN

The US authorities intend to evacuate all their employees from the embassy in Kabul within 72 hours, informs CNN citing informed sources.

Most of the diplomats will return to their homeland, while a small group will remain working at the Kabul international airport. Thus, the American administration decided to significantly speed up the process of evacuating diplomats from Afghanistan, and from Tuesday the American embassy will be closed.

The rapid evacuation of the diplomatic mission is partly due to the fact that after the withdrawal of American troops, Washington lost the ability to collect intelligence information and assess threats to its citizens in Afghanistan. This was told by a source in the US Department of Defense.

Earlier, the media reported that the US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad – the head of the American delegation at the peace talks in Doha with the Taliban – demanded that they do not enter Kabul yet and wait until the evacuation of the Americans is completed. It affects over 10,000 US citizens, including natives of Afghanistan, as well as embassy officials, translators and other Afghans who have worked for the US administration. In response, representatives of the Taliban demanded that the United States stop air strikes against their formations.

Rapid offensive Taliban to Kabul came as a complete surprise to the American leadership. Back on July 8, US President Joe Biden said at a press conference that Taliban militants will most likely not be able to capture Afghanistan, “because Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped soldiers, as well-equipped as any army in the world. and the Air Force is up against about 75,000 Taliban. “

Joe Biden also urged not to draw parallels between the events in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of the American army from Vietnam almost half a century ago. “Then the enemy in whole brigades fought their way through the gates of our embassy. Six brigades, if I remember correctly. The Taliban are not the North Vietnamese army. They don’t even come close to having such capabilities. You will not see people being removed from the roof of the US Embassy in Afghanistan. These are incomparable situations, ”the US President assured. He was referring to Operation Gusty Wind – the evacuation of American citizens from Saigon in 1975, when the United States had already withdrawn its troops from Vietnam, writes “Medusa”.