Afghanistan crisis live updates: Biden promises further strikes against ISIS-K

The US has said it will go ahead with its plan to conclude its Afghanistan mission by August 31, even as the evacuation effort, which is now in its "retrograde period", is facing an "ongoing and acute threat" from ISIS-K. August 31 is the deadline set by both the US and the Taliban for America's pullout from war-torn Afghanistan. “The threat is ongoing and it is active. Our troops are still in danger. That continues to be the case every day that they are there. This is the most dangerous part of the mission," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference on Friday.

Any sustainable solution in Afghanistan must include Pakistan, a senior Republican Senator has said. “We all must remember (that) Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation, and there is a Pakistan version of the Taliban who wishes to topple the Pakistani government and military,” Senator Lindsay Graham tweeted, in an apparent reference to Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan

France ended evacuation operations on Friday and its team at the makeshift French Embassy at Kabul's airport pulled up stakes. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defence Minister Florence Parly announced that evacuations drew to a close with nearly 3,000 transferred out of Afghanistan. “The team at France's embassy in Kabul reached Abu Dhabi before returning to France,” the statement said, suggesting that Ambassador David Martinon was returning home, too. A French base in Abu Dhabi has been the transit points for French evacuees before heading to Paris.

At least 4,200 people were evacuated from Kabul in a 12-hour period on Friday (local time), according to the latest figures from the White House. Since August 14, the US has helped evacuate approximately 109,200 people from Afghanistan, the White House added in a statement. Meanwhile, Pentagon has said that approximately 5,400 individuals are at the airport awaiting flights out of Afghanistan.

Nearly 111,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan since the start of evacuation operations on August 14?, the Pentagon said on Friday. “Total eighty-nine flights yesterday flew out of Kabul, totalling approximately 12,500 evacuees now safely out of Afghanistan in a 24-hour period,” Maj Gen Hank Taylor, tasked with the responsibility of airlifting American citizens out of Afghanistan during the Taliban crisis, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.