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The U.S. has gotten thousands of people out of Afghanistan but has a long way to go, President Joe Biden said on Sunday afternoon.

Biden, despite the weekend’s progress in evacuating people out of Afghanistan, said, “We have a long way to go. And a lot could still go wrong.”

And with thousands of Americans remaining in Afghanistan, Biden said his administration is in talks about extending its Aug. 31 deadline to exit. “There’s discussions going on among us and the military about extending,” he said. “Our hope is we will not have to extend.”

The scene at Hamid Karzai International Airport remains frenzied, with seven people killed as crowds try to get out of the country, the British military reported on Sunday.

“Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

On Saturday, troops from several nations tried to control the crush of people pressing to get into the airport, as temperatures hit the mid-90s. It wasn’t immediately clear whether those killed had been physically crushed or died from other health conditions. A NATO official told Reuters on Sunday that 20 people have died in the last week at the airport amid the evacuation.

More:A timeline of the US withdrawal and Taliban recapture of Afghanistan

More:For Biden, fallout from the Afghanistan withdrawal abroad complicates his agenda at home

Biden acknowledges ‘pain and loss’ of evacuations

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden announced Sunday the United States has evacuated 11,000 people out of Afghanistan in roughly 30 hours.

“I will say again today what I’ve said before: any American who wants to get home, we’ll get you home,” the president said during remarks Sunday. He noted that the United States is conducting an effort to get Americans to the airport in Kabul, but declined to offer any details of the plan for safety reasons.

“There’s no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss and heartbreaking images on television. It’s just the fact,” Biden said.

The president’s remarks come as the United States is facing issues both abroad and domestically, with major weather systems affecting the Northeast and Tennessee.

During his remarks, Biden warned that the security situation in Afghanistan is changing, noting that some terrorists, such as ISIS-K, may seek to exploit the situation at the Kabul airport and target innocent Americans and Afghans.

“The security situation is changing rapidly,” he said. “We’re under no illusions about the threat.”

Biden also seemed to push back on concerns from mostly conservatives that Afghans coming to the United States are not being properly vetted. Biden said that no flight from Afghanistan is coming directly to the United States. He noted that special immigrant visaa applicants are being moved from Afghanistan to other allied countries like Qatar, Germany, Kuwait and Spain for their safety and “to complete their paperwork.”

The president said that once Afghan applicants have been vetted, then “we’ll welcome these Afghans who’ve helped us for the last 20 years, because that’s who we are.”

– Rebecca Morin

Resistance to Taliban in Aghanistan’s northern provinces

The Taliban are holding talks with Afghan officials from previous governments on a political transition and say they will restore peace and security after decades of war. Afghan officials familiar with the talks say the Taliban have said they will not announce a government until after the Aug. 31 deadline for the U.S. troop withdrawal.

But they already face stirrings of resistance.

In Baghlan province, some 75 miles north of Kabul, fighters calling themselves the “People’s Uprising” claimed to have seized three districts in the Andarab Valley, nestled in the towering Hindu Kush mountains.

Khair Mohammad Khairkhwa, the former provincial head of intelligence, and Abdul Ahmad Dadgar, another leader in the uprising, said Taliban fighters had burned down homes and kidnapped children. Two other officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, made similar allegations. The Taliban did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the nearby Panjshir province — the only one yet to fall under Taliban control — a group of militia leaders and officials from the ousted government have pledged to defend it against the Taliban, who circulated video showing their fighters heading toward the region. The province is a stronghold of the Northern Alliance fighters who joined with the U.S. to topple the Taliban in 2001, and Ahmad Massoud, the son of a famous Northern Alliance commander assassinated days before the 9/11 attacks, has appeared in videos from there.

But it appears unlikely a few thousand guerrilla fighters will soon succeed where the Afghan national security forces failed despite 20 years of Western aid, assistance and training.

– Associated Press

Baby born on US military plane out of Kabul

An American transport plane landed in Germany with one more passenger than departed from Kabul, Afghanistan.

An Afghan woman gave birth on the plane, which landed Saturday at Ramstein Air Base.

“During a flight from an Intermediate Staging Base in the Middle East, the mother went into labor and began having complications,” the Air Mobility Command, a division of the U.S. Air Force, wrote in a tweet about the flight.

Both mother and baby are in good condition, according to the tweet.

– Matthew Brown

GOP blasts Biden for withdrawal situation

President Joe Biden could’ve moved the deadline to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Rep. Liz Cheney said Sunday.

“There’s no question,” the Wyoming Republican said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “You know, President Biden is the president of the United States, and he’s had no problem in reversing course on other things. … He’s reversed a number of decisions of the Trump administration.”

NBC News poll:Biden’s approval rating drops to lowest point amid rise in COVID, Afghanistan fallout

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., blasted Biden’s adherence to a withdrawal deadline that was extended about four months from a deadline deal struck by the Trump administration with the Taliban.

“August 31 was a stupid, arbitrary, politically driven deadline. The Taliban needs to know they don’t dictate the timetable on American lives,” Sasse said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Noting he was against Biden’s withdrawal plan, Sasse said Biden needs to be forceful in his dealings with militants in Afghanistan and anything that stands in the way of that plan.