Blinken reveals number of US citizens remaining in Afghanistan

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Aug. 25 that there are approximately 1,500 people who may be Americans left in Afghanistan as the United States’ presence on the ground nears its end, Report informs referring to CNN.

The State Department has contacted 500 people and is ‘aggressively’ attempting to reach the other thousand as it continues evacuations from the now-Taliban-controlled capital of Kabul.

More than 82,000 people have flown out since evacuation efforts began on Aug. 14, including ‘at least 4,500 American citizens and likely more,’ Blinken told reporters at the State Department.

“More than 500 of those Americans were evacuated in just the last day alone,” he said, adding that when evacuation operations began, “there was a population of as many as 6,000 American citizens in the country who wanted to leave.”

“Over the past 24 hours, we’ve been in direct contact with approximately 500 additional Americans and provided specific instructions on how to get to the airport safely,” he said.