Secretary Antony J. Blinken says Approximately 1,500 people who may be Americans are left in Afghanistan.

 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that he believes less than 1,000 American citizens are still in Afghanistan and attempting to leave.

Blinken said that there were 6,000 Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan on August 14 and 4,500 of them have been evacuated within the last 10 days. He added that 500 of the remaining number have been instructed on how to leave within the last 24 hours. That leaves roughly 1,000 Americans left in the country, but Blinken said the actual number is lower for a variety of reasons, including situations where Americans want to stay or have already left and not notified the government. 

"From the list of approximately 1,000, we believe that the number of Americans actively seeking assistance to leave Afghanistan is lower, and likely significantly lower," Blinken explained.

According to Blinken, 82,300 people have been flown out of Kabul since August 14.

"It's hard to overstate the complexity and the danger of this effort," Blinken said. "We are operating in a hostile environment in a city and country now controlled by the Taliban with the very real possibility of an ISIS-K attack. We're taking every precaution, but this is very high risk."

Blinken added that the United States continues to be "relentless in our outreach."

Every American in Afghanistan should be able to get out by the deadline on Aug. 31, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said this week, but he was less clear about what will happen to the unknown number of Afghans who aided America over the last 20 years and have been trying to flee the country in recent weeks.