Deadly firefight erupts at Kabul airport as evacuation chaos continues into second week

The US military said Monday that no American or NATO coalition forces were injured after a brief firefight broke out at one gate into Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport where troops are assisting with emergency evacuations of Western citizens and at-risk Afghan nationals. Navy Capt. William Urban, a spokesman for US Central Command, the combatant command that oversees American military operations in the region, said the incident “appeared to begin when an unknown hostile actor fired upon Afghan security forces.” The violence comes as the Biden administration grapples with a torrent of criticism over the fallout of its pullout from Afghanistan. President Joe Biden said Sunday that the US military has evacuated 28,000 people from Afghanistan since Aug. 14, but many thousands of Americans still remain there. The US has a “long way to go and a lot could still go wrong,” he told press from the White House, adding that, “The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful no matter when it started, when we began.”<br/>