(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Thirteen American troops were among the nearly 200 people killed in an attack at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Thursday.
A detonation set off by an ISIS-K suicide bomber near the airport’s Abbey Gate amid evacuation efforts killed at least 170 Afghans, including several children, as well as two Brits and a child of a British citizen, according to Afghan and British officials.
President Joe Biden called the U.S. service members killed in the attack “heroes who have been engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others.”
Those killed included 11 Marines, as well as an Army soldier and a Navy medic, U.S. officials said.
“Those warriors who died gave their lives to save thousands of men, women and children, Americans and Afghans alike,” Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations, said in a statement. “Their courage and selflessness represent the highest ideals of America. We pay solemn tribute to their sacrifice.”
The names of the service members are being released 24 hours after next-of-kin notifications, though some of those killed have been identified by family and officials. Here’s what we know about them so far.
Navy Fleet Marine Force Hospital Corpsman Max Soviak, of Ohio, was “very proud” to serve his country, his mother said in a statement to ABC News.
“He was very passionate about helping his fellow Americans and trying to get them home safely,” Rachel Soviak said. “There are no words to describe the pain our family is feeling. There will forever be a hole in our hearts.”
The family is praying for the troops to arrive home safely, she said.
Max Soviak was a 2017 graduate of Edison High School in Milan, Ohio. School leaders remembered him as “full of life in everything he did.”
“Max was a good student who was active in sports and other activities throughout his school career,” Superintendent Thomas Roth said in a statement. “He was well respected and liked by everyone who knew him.”
Marine David Espinoza was a native of Laredo, Texas, according to Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who released a statement confirming his death.
“Mr. Espinoza embodied the values of America: grit, dedication, service, and valor,” Cuellar said. “When he joined the military after high school, he did so with the intention of protecting our nation and demonstrating his selfless acts of service.”
Espinoza graduated from Lyndon B. Johnson High School in Laredo in 2019 and is survived by his brother, mother and stepfather, Cuellar’s office said.
Marine Rylee McCollum, of Bondurant, Wyoming, was among the service members killed, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon confirmed.
“I’m devastated to learn Wyoming lost one of our own in yesterday’s terrorist attack in Kabul,” Gordon said on Twitter. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Rylee McCollum of Bondurant.”
Marine Kareem Nikoui was among those killed in the attack, ABC News has confirmed.
Nikoui “always wanted to be a Marine,” his father, Steve Nikoui, a carpenter in California, told the Daily Beast.
“He was devoted — he was going to make a career out of this, and he wanted to go,” Nikoui told the outlet. “No hesitation for him to be called to duty.”
Marine Cpl. Hunter Lopez was the son of two members of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California — Capt. Herman Lopez and Deputy Alicia Lopez — the department said.
The 22-year-old planned on “following his parents’ footsteps” and becoming a deputy himself upon returning home from his deployment, Sheriff Chad Bianco said in a Facebook post announcing his death.
As a teen, Lopez was a Riverside Sheriff’s Explorer Scout with the Palm Desert Station. After graduating from La Quinta High School, he joined the Marine Corps in September 2017, Bianco said.
“Like his parents who serve our community, being a Marine to Hunter wasn’t a job; it was a calling,” the Riverside Sheriff’s Association said in a statement. “He loved his family, and as we grieve for Hunter and his fellow Marines taken from us too soon, there are simply no words to express how deeply he will be missed.”
His family is requesting all donations be made to the Riverside County Deputy Sheriff Relief Foundation in their name.
-ABC News’ Alondra Valle and Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. intelligence agencies remain “divided on the most likely origins of COVID-19,” after President Joe Biden’s 90-day push for his intel community to “redouble their efforts” to find a more definitive conclusion regarding the source of the virus.
In a declassified summary released late Friday afternoon, the agencies said that two hypotheses for the virus’ origin remain possible: either natural exposure to an infected animal, or an accidental lab leak.
Four elements of the U.S. intelligence community said with “low confidence” that COVID-19 was initially spread from an animal to a human, while one element assessed with “moderate confidence” that the first human infection was the result of a “laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” and pointing to the “inherently risky nature of work on Coronaviruses.”
The agencies, however, generally agreed that the virus was most likely not developed as a biological weapon, and that China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic.
Barring new information, said the report, a more definitive explanation will not be possible without Beijing’s cooperation.
Biden, responding to the report, said that efforts to identify the cause of the virus will continue.
“While this review has concluded, our efforts to understand the origins of this pandemic will not rest,” Biden said. “We will do everything we can to trace the roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death around the world, so that we can take every necessary precaution to prevent it from happening again.”
Referring to China, the president said, “Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world. Pandemics do not respect international borders, and we all must better understand how COVID-19 came to be in order to prevent further pandemics.”
But international scientists tasked with studying the virus’ origins warned Wednesday that a crucial window is “closing fast”: the shrinking opportunity for any thorough scientific study to be completed. As time wears on, potential evidence wanes, and tracing back biologic breadcrumbs will yield diminishing returns, said more than ten of the authors of a World Health Organization-led report that is urging action to “fast-track the follow-up scientific work required” for better answers by the WHO.
Assessing the intelligence and raw data available this spring, it became apparent to Biden and his top officials that a large cache of information had yet to be fully analyzed, officials told ABC News — including potential evidence that could hold clues to the virus that has now claimed more than four million lives worldwide.
Consensus among top officials in the Biden administration has been that the pandemic originated in one of two ways: The virus emerged from human contact with an infected animal, or from a laboratory accident.
But with no “smoking gun” and limited access to raw data, discussion of the science has played out in a haze of circumstantial evidence.
Following Biden’s call for clarity in May, intelligence agencies have spent the last three months poring over an untapped trove of information, and have amassed classified records and communications, genomic fingerprints of the virus, and early signals as to where and when the virus may have flared up first.
Biden’s August deadline marks zero hour for the next phase of a larger international quest: to trace back the virus in order to hold the responsible parties to account, and to understand its inception in order to prevent the next one.
Any emerging answers, however, come amid a roiling geopolitical debate, as COVID-19’s origins have become a contentious wedge issue at home — while abroad, the Chinese government vehemently denies the virus could have come from one of its labs.
“What the U.S. cares about is not facts and truth, but how to consume and malign China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday ahead of the U.S. report, claiming that China had welcomed collaborative research which “laid the foundation for the next-phase global origins tracing work.”
The Chinese government rejected the World Health Organization’s proposed audits of Wuhan’s labs in July, part of the UN agency’s recommended phase two study — saying they could not accept needless “repetitive research” when “clear conclusions” had already been reached.
But there have been no definitive conclusions as to where COVID-19 came from. The joint WHO-led team presented a range of options in their March report, calling a lab leak “extremely unlikely,” but offering pathways for further investigation. Team members have voiced frustration with the lack of cooperation from the Chinese government — echoed in international criticism that politics had stymied science.
Since then, the WHO has become increasingly receptive to the possibility that the virus resulted from a lab leak. In July, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged that ruling out a lab leak theory was “premature” and recommended audits of the Wuhan labs in further studies. China’s subsequent rebuff left the WHO to proceed without them.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has underscored that the U.S. will continue the “diplomatic spadework” of rallying support for the WHO-led study — while warning that the administration will not accept Beijing’s stonewalling.
“Either they will allow, in a responsible way, investigators in to do the real work of figuring out where [COVID-19] came from, or they will face isolation in the international community,” Sullivan told Fox News in June.
A group of bipartisan lawmakers urged Biden not to let this month’s deadline hamstring a thorough investigation.
“If the 90-day effort you have announced does not yield conclusions in which the United States has a high degree of confidence, we urge you to direct the intelligence community to continue prioritizing this inquiry until such conclusions are possible,” Sens. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote in a late July letter to the president.
Asked about the report’s release, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said it would take “several days” for an unclassified and collated version to come together, but that agencies were working “expeditiously to prepare that.”
With no definitive proof of the virus’ origin, scientists and policymakers alike have been left to speculate. Some of the first COVID-19 clusters occurred around Wuhan’s wet markets, where exotic wild fare was sold in close quarters, offering ample opportunity for the virus to jump from animals to humans, as in past epidemics.
No direct animal host for COVID-19 has been identified, and if there is one, it could take years to find, experts say. While environmental samples from the Wuhan markets tested positive, animal samples that were tested did not. Transmission earlier on and within the wider community would suggest the market was not the original source of the pandemic, experts say.
In late summer and early autumn of 2019, satellite imagery shared exclusively with ABC showed dramatic spikes in auto traffic around major Wuhan hospitals — suggesting the virus may have been spreading long before the world was alerted. U.S. intelligence officials had already been warning that a contagion was sweeping through the region as far back as late November 2019, changing patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the populations, according to sources briefed on the matter.
Proponents of the lab-leak theory point to gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a controversial study that amplifies a virus’ potency to understand how to neutralize it better. They also point to concerns over biosafety at the WIV’s facilities, where researchers had worked with bat coronavirus samples 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2 — as well as workers at the lab who were hospitalized with “symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses” in November 2019.
Advocates of zoonotic origin, however, emphasize that the 4% discrepancy means a world of genetic difference — and WIV lead researcher Shi Zhengli insists that she tested all her workers for COVID-19 antibodies, and all tests came back negative.
Despite pressure to approach the “high degree of confidence” desired by the public and requested in the lawmakers’ July letter, such certainty remains elusive — something presaged by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines in an interview with Yahoo News earlier this summer.
“We’re hoping to find a smoking gun,” Haines said. “It’s challenging to do that.”
-ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Karson Yiu, James Gordon Meek, Eric M. Strauss, Ben Gittleson and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(ETHIOPIA) — As chaos envelops Kabul after Afghanistan’s government collapsed and the Taliban seized control, horrific stories and heartbreaking images also pour out of Ethiopia. Some in the U.S. with a connection to the African country are feeling a call to action.
In Washington, D.C., home to the largest concentration of Ethiopians in the U.S. and the largest Ethiopian population outside Africa, there’s an intense debate over the war and who’s at fault.
“Tigray is part of Ethiopia. Tigrayans are Ethiopians until they decide otherwise. So any war, any suffering in Ethiopia, should be a pain to everybody,” Assefa Fisseha, a man who fled the country 20 years to begin a new life in America, told ABC News.
In Fisseha’s homeland, within the northern region of Tigray, millions are caught in the middle of civil war between Tigrayan defense forces and the Ethiopian government.
Each side has been accused of atrocities throughout the conflict, with systemic rape and starvation used as weapons of war, according to the United Nations, senior U.S. officials and monitoring groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Roads, bridges, hospitals and farms have been destroyed, exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe, according to aid groups.
But information can be hard to come by. Internet outages by the Ethiopian government have disconnected families inside and outside the country for days, weeks or even months at a time, according to Internet monitor NetBlocks.
With over 110 million people, Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in Africa. The conflict has left thousands dead and displaced roughly two million people in Tigray, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
“On the ground, what I’m really seeing is just hungry people there, people are extremely paranoid and protective,” Leoh Hailu-Ghermy, who made a two-day trek to the region to deliver supplies and aid to refugees, told ABC News.
Hailu-Ghermy is one of the voices in the movement to end the war many activists call a modern-day genocide.
Earlier this month, more apparent victims of the atrocities in the brutal, 10-monthlong civil war washed up on a riverbank in neighboring Sudan. Fifty bodies were believed to be Tigrayans from a nearby village, according to The Associated Press.
There have been reports of massacres, ethnic cleansing and widespread sexual assault by Ethiopian government troops, according to Amnesty International.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. has seen “acts of ethnic cleansing,” but stopped short of calling the atrocities genocide — a specific legal term in international law. The Ethiopian government has fiercely denied such accusations.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see that people’s livelihoods can be stripped away from them in such an unfair way and that the world wouldn’t care because of the geography of that place or because of the race of those people,” Hailu-Ghermy said.
Just last week, the Biden administration called out the Ethiopian government for obstructing humanitarian aid, including convoys, saying aid workers will run out of food this week.
In May, President Joe Biden issued a lengthy statement, calling for a ceasefire, negotiations to halt the conflict and an end to human rights abuses, including the widespread sexual violence.
The Biden administration also tapped a special envoy for the region to push for a diplomatic solution — and fired a warning shot at the Ethiopian government, a critical U.S. partner, by imposing limited sanctions.
In May, the State Department said it imposed visa bans on officials from Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea — whose military crossed the border to fight Tigrayan forces. Because visas are confidential by law, it did not say who was impacted but the U.S. Treasury slapped financial sanctions on Monday on General Filipos Woldeyohannes, the chief of staff of the Eritrean Defense Forces, accusing his forces of massacres, looting, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings of civilians.
Hailu-Ghermy and other advocates say they are looking for more action.
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed was once seen as a popular reformer when he came into power in 2018, even winning the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a decades-long war with neighboring Eritrea. His election unseated the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, which dominated Ethiopia politics prior to his administration, and tensions between his federal government and their regional leaders exploded into conflict last November.
“Now that the conflict has been ongoing for several months, it produces its own logic. And so every atrocity, every retaliation begets another retaliation and unfortunately, another atrocity,” Aly Verjee, a senior adviser to the Africa program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told ABC News.
Tigrayans celebrated when Abiy declared a ceasefire in June, but now their forces are on the offensive and Abiy responded with a call for all capable citizens to take up arms and join the fight to show patriotism.
“Ethiopians at home and abroad, your motherland calls upon you. History has shown that there is no force that can stand in our way when we say no more,” he said in a statement.
Analysts fear the conflict will spiral further out of control, putting hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine and potentially spilling over borders to Ethiopia’s neighbors.
“Let’s not forget that the reason the majority of Ethiopian Americans are in the United States is because, at one time or another, there was conflict in Ethiopia. Let’s not see another generation of Ethiopians feel that they have to leave the country because of conflict,” Verjee said.
ABC News Conor Finnegan contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — House progressives on Friday urgently called on Democratic congressional leaders to pass legislation to extend the federal eviction moratorium after the Supreme Court ended an extension late Thursday night.
“As your fellow colleagues, we implore you to act with the highest levels of urgency to advance a permanent legislative solution in a must pass legislative vehicle in order to extend the life-saving federal eviction moratorium for the duration of the deadly global health crisis. We must continue to curb the spread of the Delta variant using every legislative tool at our disposal in Congress,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, exclusively obtained by ABC News.
The letter was led by Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jimmy Gomez, and Cori Bush. More than 60 lawmakers have signed on to the letter, ABC News is told.
In an eight-page ruling, the Supreme Court determined that Congress must extend the federal eviction moratorium unilaterally.
“Congress was on notice that a further extension would almost surely require new legislation, yet it failed to act in the several weeks leading up to the moratorium’s expiration,” the court wrote in an unsigned, eight-page opinion.
“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it,” the court said.
“It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the COVID–19 Delta variant. But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,” the court writes. “It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here.”
The move will likely mean hundreds of thousands of tenants are lose their homes because they are unable to pay rent, and it comes as the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to run rampant across the country.
Bush, who was formerly homeless, posted up on the Capitol steps to protest the moratorium ending earlier in August.
The moratorium, essentially a nationwide ban on evictions, was put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last September. In June, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the eviction ban to continue through the end of July but signaled in its ruling that it would block any further extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.”
Amid public outcry, House Democratic leadership was looking to possibly take legislative action before its summer recess, but those efforts did not take place.
The CDC ended up passing another extension in early August, largely due to the public outcry and protests led by Bush.
In a statement Friday, Pelosi did not indicate that the House would return from its recess to pass legislation. She called on state and local governments to disperse rental assistance immediately. Only about $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in aid had been disbursed by the end of July, according to figures released earlier in the week.
“Earlier this month, thanks to the leadership of President Biden and Congressional Democrats, the imminent fear of eviction and being put out on the street was lifted for countless families across America with the issuing of a new CDC eviction moratorium. Last night, the Supreme Court immorally ripped away that relief in a ruling that is arbitrary and cruel,” she said in a statement.
“Congressional Democrats have not and will not ever accept a situation of mass evictions. We will continue our work to ensure that families suffering hardship during the pandemic can have the safety of home, as we also work with communities to ensure the immediate disbursement by states and localities of the over $45 billion allocated by Congress for rental assistance,” she added.
Following the release of the progressives’ letter, Pelosi also sent her own letter to the Democratic caucus, again reiterating that the chamber will assess “possible legislative remedies.”
“Preventing mass evictions is a priority that unites Democrats, and I remain proud of the work that our House Democratic Caucus has done to provide relief for families and landlords, including working with the Biden Administration to secure the new moratorium and allocating the $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance initiated by Chairwoman Maxine Waters. We will continue to work with the Biden Administration and with our communities to urge a halt to evictions and to ensure the immediate disbursement by states and localities of the rental assistance,” she said in her letter.
“At the same time, the House is assessing possible legislative remedies. House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters is examining the most effective way to expedite the flow of funding of rental assistance by states and localities. Families must be protected during the pandemic, and we will explore every possible solution,” she said.
“As we all agree, eviction is a horror that no family should ever have to experience: cribs and personal belongings on the street, children in fear and distress and parents struggling to find basic shelter. As we work to prevent this crisis, I again salute our House Democratic Caucus for the relentless and values-based leadership that Members continue to bring to this fight,” she said, in a nod to progressives.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also released a statement late Thursday lamenting the Supreme Court’s decision.
“The Biden Administration is disappointed that the Supreme Court has blocked the most recent CDC eviction moratorium while confirmed cases of the Delta variant are significant across the country. As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19,” Psaki said.
“In light of the Supreme Court ruling and the continued risk of COVID-19 transmission, President Biden is once again calling on all entities that can prevent evictions – from cities and states to local courts, landlords, Cabinet Agencies – to urgently act to prevent evictions,” she said.
Psaki said Friday that President Biden supported extension efforts in Congress but also called for action at the state level.
ABC News has reached out to Pelosi’s and Schumer’s offices for comment.
-ABC News’ Molly Nagle and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — A Florida police officer was supported by his fellow officers as he was flown out of the state for COVID-19 treatment due to a lack of availability in local hospitals, according to his wife.
Police officers lined the tarmac Wednesday as their colleague, West Palm Beach police officer Anthony Testa, was flown to Ohio.
In Ohio, Testa, who is on a ventilator, is expected to be placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine, which removes carbon dioxide from blood and sends back blood with oxygen to the body, allowing the heart and lungs time to rest and heal.
Amid a summer surge of COVID-19 brought on by the delta variant and low vaccination rates in the United States, doctors were not able to place Testa on an ECMO in Florida, according to his wife,
“He deserves this,” Janine Testa told “Good Morning America.” “He can fight and I know he will.”
In Florida, state statistics in late July showed virus-related hospitalizations are nearly at their highest point since the onset of the pandemic, with more than 1,200 COVID-19 patients being admitted to the hospital every day.
Now, 95% of the intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the state are full.
Some hospitals in the state are also running out of morgue space and using rented refrigerated trucks for bodies.
“Our morgues are just not designed to hold that many bodies,” Armando Llechu, chief officer of hospital operations at Florida’s Cape Coral hospital, told “GMA.” “This is not being exaggerated or blown out of proportion by the media. This is real.”
In West Palm Beach, as officers saw Officer Testa off for further treatment, they also mourned one of their own already lost to COVID-19.
Officer Robert Williams, with the force since 2001, died on Aug. 21 due to complications from COVID-19, the department shared on Twitter.
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Chaos has enveloped Kabul after Afghanistan’s government collapsed and the Taliban seized control, all but ending America’s 20-year campaign as it began: under Taliban rule.
Two suicide bombers affiliated with ISIS-K carried out what the Pentagon called a “complex attack” outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 13 American service members and wounding 18, among scores of Afghan casualties.
President Joe Biden has addressed the nation on the attack from the White House Thursday, saying, “America will not be intimidated.” Biden sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos for an exclusive one-on-one interview at the White House last week, the president’s first interview since the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and warned of the threat of attacks on the ground.
Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:
Aug 27, 11:06 am
No second suicide bomber: Pentagon
Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor said at a Pentagon briefing on Friday that the U.S. now believes there was just one explosion on Thursday and one suicide bomber — and that there was no second explosion or bomber at or near the Baron Hotel.
“I can confirm for you that we do not believe that there was a second explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, that it was one suicide bomber,” he said. “We’re not sure how that report was provided incorrectly, but we do know it’s not any surprise that in the confusion of very dynamic events like this can cause information sometimes to be misreported or garbled.”
Officials had said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday that they believed there were two suicide bombers — one outside the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport and one at or near the Baron Hotel, the latter of which has now been retracted.
Aug 27, 10:46 am
170 Afghans killed in the Kabul attack: Afghan official
At least 170 Afghans were killed and 200 wounded in the attack in Kabul on Thursday, according to an official at the Ministry of Public Health who spoke on condition of anonymity with ABC News.
He said among the 170 dead, 34 are male (including two boys and 32 men), and four are female (including one girl and three women). He said that the identities of the 132 other people are still unknown at this stage.
The World Health Organization regional headquarters in Cairo had reported earlier at least 161 Afghan civilians died in the attack in Kabul on Thursday.
Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital in Kabul reported to the WHO it had 145 dead bodies brought into the hospital. The Emergency Hospital in Kabul also reported 16 dead on arrival.
Aug 27, 10:04 am
US continues evacuations despite threats of more attacks
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command and highest-ranking commander in the Middle East, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that further security threats following the attack in Kabul are “extremely real.”
“We believe it is their desire to continue those attacks, and we expect those attacks to continue,” he said via a videoconference.
“Right now, our focus really, we have other active threat streams, extremely active threat streams against the airfield, we want to make sure we are taking the steps to protect ourselves there. Our focus is on that,” he added.
He said the U.S. is doing everything it can to prepare for those attacks including reaching out to the Taliban, “who are actually providing the outer security cordon around the airfield, to make sure they know what we expect them to do to protect us.”
Despite Thursday’s “complex attack” and threats for more, he said the U.S. will continue its evacuation mission ahead of a full military withdrawal on Aug. 31.
Biden, in remarks from the White House later on Thursday, underscored that he has repeatedly warned that the evacuation mission in Afghanistan was a dangerous one — but one that would continue until the end of the month, even as threats persist.
“These ISIS terrorists will not win,” Biden said. “We will rescue the Americans in there. We will get our Afghan allies out. And our mission will go on.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in a White House briefing following his remarks, cited “ongoing threats” as reasoning for why Biden and his military commanders stuck to the Aug. 31 deadline.
Aug 27, 9:11 am
Former Army Ranger details ‘vulnerable’ US position at airport gates
Jariko Denman, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and was working in Kabul on Thursday alongside other veterans to help get evacuees out, described the conditions outside the airport to ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday as one that left American forces vulnerable.
“The way that we were forced to expose ourselves in order to get our people in, made us very, very much vulnerable to it,” said Denman, who was flown out of Kabul and to Qatar just ahead of the attack.
“With the sheer numbers of people coming in, we didn’t have the time to, you know, do those different steps and security of walking up, talk to them, search them,” Denman said. “It was just, you know, a mob of 7,000, 8,000 people arm’s distance away.”
Denman said the conditions outside the gate were the worst he’s seen in his 20 years in the Army which includes 15 deployments.
“Families, people carrying toddlers, babies, elderly, trying to get to these gates, to get to us to get through, and I would describe it as a mosh pit on steroids,” he said. “You know, 600, 700 meters long of compacted human beings trying to get to one little choke point. It was terrible.”
“In 20 years, I never saw an operating force more sleep-deprived or just working more than these Marines and other airmen and soldiers that were on the ground,” he added.
Denman, who is in touch with people still in Kabul, said he’s hearing the same theme in the wake of the attack: “It was just carnage.”
Aug 27, 7:49 am
‘Every effort was made to destroy’ Kabul embassy staff details, UK says
The United Kingdom said “every effort was made to destroy sensitive material” when British embassy staff in Kabul evacuated their building as Taliban fighters approached Afghanistan’s capital.
“We have worked tirelessly to secure the safety of those who worked for us including getting three families to safety,” a spokesperson for the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told ABC News in a statement Friday. “During the drawdown of our Embassy every effort was made to destroy sensitive material.”
A report published Thursday by British daily national newspaper The Times said its journalist found papers with the contact details of Afghans working for the U.K. government and of locals applying for positions “scattered on the ground at the British embassy compound in Kabul that has been seized by the Taliban.” Some Afghan employees and their families have not been able to evacuate Kabul, according to The Times.
A source at the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told ABC News: “We are grateful to The Times for sharing the information retrieved with us and working with us to enable us to get these three families to safety.”
Aug 27, 6:59 am
US, allies evacuate 12,500 people from Kabul in past 24 hours
The United States has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of some 105,000 people from Kabul since Aug. 14, when the Taliban closed in on Afghanistan’s capital, according to a White House official.
In a 24-hour period from Thursday to Friday, 35 U.S. military flights carried approximately 8,500 evacuees out of Kabul. Another 4,000 people were evacuated via 54 coalition aircraft. Since the end of July, approximately 110,600 people have been relocated from Kabul via U.S. military and coalition flights, the White House
Aug 27, 6:18 am
Philadelphia airport to receive Afghan refugees
People fleeing Afghanistan are expected to arrive at Philadelphia’s primary airport in the coming days, according to a city spokesperson.
“This is a federal-led operation, and we are collaborating with the federal government in this emergency response, protecting the rights and dignity of the Afghan families arriving in the country,” the spokesperson told ABC News on Friday. “We stand ready to provide medical assistance, housing, and connection to our diverse community of immigrant service providers who can assist with an array of social services.”
The Philadelphia International Airport is the second airport in the United States to welcome arrivals of Afghan refugees, in addition to the Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
It was unclear when or exactly how many Afghan refugees would be landing in Philadelphia.
“Philadelphia stands in solidarity with Afghan refugees and we look forward to providing them a safe haven in our Welcoming City,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement.
Aug 27, 5:33 am
UK enters final stages of Afghanistan evacuation
The United Kingdom announced Friday that it has entered the final stages of its evacuation from Afghanistan and no more people will be called to the airport to leave.
Processing facilities at the Baron Hotel in Kabul, outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, have been closed and the British Armed Forces will now focus on evacuating the U.K. nationals and others who have already been processed and are at the airport awaiting departure, according to a press release from the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
“The U.K.’s ability to process further cases is now extremely reduced and additional numbers will be limited. No further people will be called forward to the airport for evacuation,” the defense ministry said. “Evacuating all those civilians we have already processed will free up the capacity needed on U.K. military aircraft to bring out our remaining diplomats and military personnel.”
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace called it a “remarkable achievement” that his government has evacuated more than 13,000 people from Kabul since Aug. 13, when the Taliban closed in on Afghanistan’s capital.
“Our top priority as we move through this process will be the protection of all those involved who are operating in a heightened threat environment,” Wallace said in a statement Friday. “It is with deep regret that not everyone has been able to be evacuated during this process.”
“We will continue to honour our debt to all those who have not yet been able to leave Afghanistan,” he added. “We will do all that we can to ensure they reach safety.”
The brand, which has been in development for two years, is focused on sustainability and high-performance, non-comedogenic formulations, Huntington-Whiteley said.
“I wanted to create products with innovative clean ingredients, sustainable solutions and high-performance, non-comedogenic formulations. I have such a deep love and passion for the beauty industry that this feels like an organic next step for me in my career,” Huntington-Whiteley said in an interview with Good Morning America.
Huntington-Whiteley says starting in the modeling industry at 16 gave her the education she needed to create her own products.
She partnered with biotechnology company Amyris to help provide ingredients that are both good for people and the environment.
“There’s a new demand for science-driven brands that deliver real results and guarantee an eco-friendly approach,” Rose Inc. CEO Caroline Hadfield said.
The brand is launching with the “Modern Essentials” collection including products like brightening serum to hydrating concealer.
All of the products are 100% vegan and cruelty-free.
“Confidence and embracing one’s own beauty is definitely a journey. It has always important to me to offer products that make people feel good, feel beautiful and confident,” Huntington-Whiteley added.
You can shop items from the new beauty brand below now available at Sephora.
(NEW YORK) — As many children return to in-person learning and adults end a period of working from home, experts are concerned about the upcoming flu season and its implications for hospitals that are already pushed to the limits of capacity due to the COVID-19 delta variant.
Flu season usually runs from October to May, with experts suggesting the best time to get vaccinated is from early September to the end of October, although some major retail pharmacies have already begun advertising this year’s supply.
“We should always prepare for the flu season by planning to get vaccinated. This fall and winter there is likely to be circulation of COVID, influenza as well as other respiratory viruses,” said Dr. David Hirschwerk, an infectious disease specialist at Northwell Health in New York.
For some, that might mean getting vaccines for the flu and COVID-19 at the same time — either a booster shot or primary COVID-19 vaccination. Either way, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say it is safe to get the COVID and flu vaccines during the same visit.
“There is currently no contraindication to receiving both at the same time and for many people, this will be the most convenient way to handle it,” said Hirschwerk.
Experts say that with multiple viruses now circulating, every bit of protection helps.
Other seasonal respiratory viruses — such as RSV and adenovirus — have proven unpredictable, surging during the summer, a time typically outside their regular season.
By the same token, it’s not possible to predict the severity of the 2021-2022 flu season. Public health officials like to say if you’ve seen one flu season, you’ve seen one flu season — meaning every year starts and ends at different times, with different strains and different severities. Some worry the low number of cases last year during remote learning and work from home situations — as well as people wearing masks when they were in public — could be the calm before a very severe flu season this year.
Influenza activity during the 2020-2021 season was at a record low despite high levels of testing. Less than 1% of tested respiratory samples were positive for the flu. For comparison, the prior three flu seasons showed positive tests for influenza between 26% and 30%.
During the 2019-2020 season, 38 million people became sick with flu, resulting in more than 400,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths.
A major contributor to the low cases of flu during 2020-2021 was a record number of flu vaccinations. An estimated 193.8 million doses were distributed in the U.S. during the 2020-2021 season.
Many primary care doctors, especially pediatricians, are playing catch-up when it comes to making sure that everyone is getting their routine vaccinations as the COVID pandemic resulted in many maintenance visits being canceled or rescheduled.
While children under 12 are not yet eligible for the COVID vaccine, those ages 6 months and older are strongly encouraged to get the flu vaccine. Many school districts insist on it.
“The first time a child gets the flu vaccine, it’s two doses, not just one, so people should plan for that,” said Dr. Eric Cioe-Pena, emergency medicine specialist at Staten Island University Hospital.
Annual flu vaccines are especially important for children ages 6 months to 4 years, adults aged 50 and older, nursing home residents, people with underlying health conditions such as heart disease and lung disease, people who are immunosuppressed and people who are pregnant.
By now, most people are aware that vaccines prevent serious illness for the individual getting the vaccine and for those around them who are more vulnerable to severe illness. In a typical year, hundreds of children die from the flu. The CDC estimates that an average of 36,000 adults have died of the flu each year over the past decade. The worst recent flu season was 2017-2018, when 61,000 people died, according to the CDC.
“It is very important that all children (6 months and older) receive the flu vaccine. This helps to reduce risk of infection, of severe complications from flu, and it protects the entire household and communities by reducing transmission to others,” said Hirschwerk.
To vaccinate as many individuals as possible, vaccine makers are producing large quantities of several types of flu vaccine. Flu vaccines are typically made using a process that involves eggs, but alternative vaccines will be available for people who have egg allergies.
Getting vaccination is a key step in preventing the flu and decreasing transmission, experts say. Continuing mitigation measures are also likely to keep any influenza surges at bay, especially as the country to struggles to cope with the devastation caused by COVID-19.
“Mask-wearing has significantly curbed the spread of influenza,” said Cioe-Pena. “Wash your hands, wipe down commonly touched surfaces like keyboards, phones and door knobs. Stay home when you are sick, and wear a mask.”
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — With the Taliban growing more violent and adding checkpoints near Kabul’s airport, an all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a final daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the “Pineapple Express” to shepherd hundreds of at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety, members of the group told ABC News.
Moving after nightfall in near-pitch black darkness and extremely dangerous conditions, the group said it worked unofficially in tandem with the United States military and U.S. embassy to move people, sometimes one person at a time, or in pairs, but rarely more than a small bunch, inside the wire of the U.S. military-controlled side of Hamid Karzai International Airport.
The Pineapple Express’ mission was underway Thursday when the attack occurred in Kabul. Two suicide bombers believed to have been ISIS fighters killed at least 13 U.S. service members — 10 U.S. Marines, a Navy corpsman, an Army soldier and another service member — and wounded 15 other service members, according to U.S. officials.
There were wounded among the Pineapple Express travelers from the blast, and members of the group said they were assessing whether unaccounted-for Afghans they were helping had been killed.
As of Thursday morning, the group said it had brought as many as 500 Afghan special operators, assets and enablers and their families into the airport in Kabul overnight, handing them each over to the protective custody of the U.S. military.
That number added to more than 130 others over the past 10 days who had been smuggled into the airport encircled by Taliban fighters since the capital fell to the extremists on Aug. 16 by Task Force Pineapple, an ad hoc groups of current and former U.S. special operators, aid workers, intelligence officers and others with experience in Afghanistan who banded together to save as many Afghan allies as they could.
“Dozens of high-risk individuals, families with small children, orphans, and pregnant women, were secretly moved through the streets of Kabul throughout the night and up to just seconds before ISIS detonated a bomb into the huddled mass of Afghans seeking safety and freedom,” Army Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret commander who led the private rescue effort, told ABC News.
After succeeding with helping dozens of Afghan commandos and interpreters get into the protective ring of the airport created by the 6,000 American troops President Joe Biden dispatched to the airfield after Kabul fell to the Taliban, the group initiated an ambitious ground operation this week aided by U.S. troops inside. The objective was to move individuals and families through the cover of darkness on the “Pineapple Express.” The week-long effort and Wednesday’s operation were observed by ABC News under the agreement of secrecy while the heart-pounding movements unfolded.
The operation carried out Wednesday night was an element of “Task Force Pineapple,” an informal group whose mission began as a frantic effort on Aug. 15 to get one former Afghan commando who had served with Mann into the Kabul airport as he was being hunted by the Taliban who were texting him death threats.
They knew he had worked with U.S. Special Forces and the elite SEAL Team Six for a dozen years, targeting Taliban leadership, and was, therefore, a high-value target for them, sources told ABC News.
Two months ago, this commando told ABC News he had narrowly escaped a tiny outpost in northern Afghanistan that was later overrun while awaiting his U.S. special immigrant visa to be approved.
The effort since he was saved in a harrowing effort, along with his family of six, reached a crescendo this week with dozens of covert movements coordinated virtually on Wednesday by more than 50 people in an encrypted chat room, which Mann described as a night full of dramatic scenes rivaling a “Jason Bourne” thriller unfolding every 10 minutes.
The small groups of Afghans repeatedly encountered Taliban foot soldiers who they said beat them but never checked identity papers that might have revealed them as operators who spent two decades killing Taliban leadership. All carried U.S. visas, pending visa applications or new applications prepared by members of Task Force Pineapple, they told ABC News.
“This Herculean effort couldn’t have been done without the unofficial heroes inside the airfield who defied their orders to not help beyond the airport perimeter, by wading into sewage canals and pulling in these targeted people who were flashing pineapples on their phones,” Mann said.
With the uniformed U.S. military unable to venture outside the airport’s perimeter to collect Americans and Afghans who’ve sought U.S. protection for their past joint service, they instead provided overwatch and awaited coordinated movements by an informal Pineapple Express ground team that included “conductors” led by former Green Beret Capt. Zac Lois, known as the underground railroad’s “engineer.”
The Afghan operators, assets, interpreters and their families were known as “passengers” and they were being guided remotely by “shepherds,” who are, in most cases their loyal former U.S. special operations forces and CIA comrades and commanders, according to chat room communications viewed by ABC News.
There was one engineer, a few conductors, as well as people who were performing intelligence-gathering duties. The intelligence was pooled in the encrypted chat group in real-time and included guiding people on maps to GPS pin drops at rally points for them to stage in the shadows and in hiding until summoned by a conductor wearing a green chem light, ABC News observed in the encrypted chat.
Once summoned, passengers would hold up their smartphones with a graphic of yellow pineapples on a pink field.
Before the deadly ISIS-K bombing on Thursday near the Abbey Gate of the airport known as HKIA, intelligence warnings were issued about possible improvised explosive device attacks by ISIS-K. Around 8 p.m. EST Wednesday, the shepherds reported in the chatroom, which was viewed by ABC News, one by one that their passenger groups maneuvering discreetly in the darkness toward rally points had suddenly gone dark and were unreachable on their cell phones.
“We have lost comms with several of our teams,” texted Jason Redman, a combat-wounded former Navy SEAL and author, who was shepherding Afghans he knew.
There was concern the Taliban had dropped the cell towers — but another Task Force Pineapple member, a Green Beret, reported that he learned the U.S. military had employed cell phone jammers to counter the IED threat at Abbey gate. Within an hour, most had reestablished communications with the “passengers” and the slow, deliberate movements of each group resumed under the ticking clock of sunrise in Kabul, ABC News observed in the encrypted chat.
“The whole night was a roller-coaster ride. People were so terrified in that chaotic environment. These people were so exhausted, I kept trying to put myself in their shoes,” Redman said.
Looking back at an effort that saved at least, by their count, 630 Afghan lives, Redman expressed deep frustration “that our own government didn’t do this. We did what we should do, as Americans.”
Many of the Afghans arrived near Abbey Gate and waded through a sewage-choked canal toward a U.S. soldier wearing red sunglasses to identify himself. They waved their phones with the pineapples and were scooped up and brought inside the wire to safety. Others were brought in by an Army Ranger wearing a modified American flag patch with the Ranger Regiment emblem, sources told ABC News.
Lois said the Task Force Pineapple was able to accomplish a truly historic event, by evacuating hundreds of personnel over the last week.
“That is an astounding number for an organization that was only assembled days before the start of operations and most of its members had never met each other in person,” Lois told ABC News.
Lois said he modeled his slow and steady system of maneuvering the Afghan families in the darkness after Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad for American slave escapees.
The Afghan passengers represented the span of the two-decade war there, and participants included Army Maj. Jim Gant, a retired Green Beret known as “Lawrence of Afghanistan,” who was the subject of a 2014 Nightline investigation.
“I have been involved in some of the most incredible missions and operations that a special forces guy could be a part of, and I have never been a part of anything more incredible than this,” Gant told ABC News. “The bravery and courage and commitment of my brothers and sisters in the Pineapple community was greater than the U.S. commitment on the battlefield.”
“I just want to get my people out,” he added.
Dan O’Shea, a retired SEAL commander, said he successfully helped his own group, which included a U.S. citizen who served as an operative and his Afghan father and brother in a nail-biting crucible as they walked on foot to one entry point after another for hours. They dodged Taliban checkpoints and patrols in order to get inside the U.S. side of the airport and on a plane out of Kabul.
“He was not willing to let his father and his brother behind; even it meant he would die. He refused to leave his family,” O’Shea, a former counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan, told ABC News. “Leaving a man behind is not in our SEAL ethos. Many Afghans have a stronger vision of our democratic values than many Americans do.”
It all began with trying to save one Afghan Commando, whose special immigrant visa was never finalized.
During an intense night last week involving coordination between Mann and another Green Beret, an intelligence officer, former aid workers and a staffer for Florida Republican and Green Beret officer Rep. Mike Waltz, the ad hoc team enlisted the aid of a sleepless U.S. Embassy officer inside the airport. He helped Marines at a gate to identify the former Afghan commando, who was caught in the throngs of civilians outside the airport and who said he saw two civilians knocked to the ground and killed.
“Two people died next to me — 1 foot away,” he told ABC News from outside the airport that night, as he tried for hours to reach an entry control point manned by U.S. Marines a short distance away.
With Taliban fighters mixing into the crowd of thousands and firing their AK-47s above the masses, the former elite commando was finally pulled into the U.S. security perimeter, where he shouted the password “Pineapple!” to American troops at the checkpoint. The password has since changed, the sources said.
Two days later, the group of his American friends and comrades also helped get his family inside the airport to join him with the aid of the same U.S. embassy officer.
Mann said the group of friends decided to keep going by saving his family and hundreds more of his elite forces comrades on the run from the Taliban.
Former deputy assistant secretary of defense and ABC News analyst Mick Mulroy is part of both Task Force Pineapple and Task Force Dunkirk, who are assisting former Afghan comrades.
“They never wavered. I and many of my friends are here today because of their bravery in battle. We owe them all effort to get them out and honor our word,” Mulroy said.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 633,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.4 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 60.5% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:
Aug 27, 4:27 am
Houston sees 5-fold increase in COVID-19 vaccinations
COVID-19 vaccinations in Houston increased more than five-fold on Thursday as the city launched a new incentive program.
The Houston Health Department is now providing up to $150 in gift cards to get vaccinated against COVID-19. A total of 740 vaccine doses were administered at the health department’s eligible sites on Thursday, the first day of the program, marking a 51% increase over Wednesday’s total of 121 doses.
Of the total shots administered Thursday, 658 were first doses and 82 were second dose, according to a press release from the health department.
Aug 26, 10:29 pm
SCOTUS suspends eviction moratorium
The U.S. Supreme Court suspended the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium in an unsigned, 6-3 opinion Thursday night
“It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the COVID–19 Delta variant. But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,” the court wrote. “It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here.”
“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it,” it continued. “The application to vacate stay presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE and by him referred to the Court is granted.”
Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan dissented.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki lamented the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying the CDC moratorium “saved lives by preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus.”
“As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19,” Psaki said in a statement, before reiterating President Joe Biden’s call for states, localities, landlords and local courts to do what they can to prevent evictions.
The Biden administration has repeatedly called on Congress to act in regard to the eviction moratorium, but Republicans have opposed the proposals.
The CDC had issued a 60-day extension to the moratorium the first week in August after the previous one expired July 31.
Aug 26, 6:37 pm
Every state now reporting high community transmission
Every state in the country is now reporting high community transmission of COVID-19, according to newly updated federal data.
In mid-June, no states were reporting high transmission, and just six states were reporting substantial transmission. Now, 10 weeks later, all 50 states are in that category, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The development comes as the delta variant has also rapidly spread. In June, the highly contagious variant accounted for just 26.4% of all new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.; today, it accounts for nearly 99%, according to the CDC.
Aug 26, 4:07 pm
US reporting more than 800 deaths per day, marking highest average in 5 months
The U.S. is continuing to experience its steepest increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations since the winter of 2020, with more than 101,000 patients now in hospitals, according to federal data. This marks the highest number of patients in seven months.
Eight weeks ago, there were under 12,000 patients receiving care.
The country’s daily death average has increased to more than 800 deaths per day. This is a 317% jump in the last seven weeks and marks the highest average since mid-March 2021.
