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U.S. Military Leave Afghanistan, Ending Longest U.S. War; U.S. Completes Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan; Ida, Now a Depression, Leaves Behind Untold Devastation; Rescue Operations Underway in Flooded Communities; Life-Threatening Flash Floods in Louisiana and Mississippi; EU Bumps U.S. from Safe Travel List Over COVID Concerns. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired August 31, 2021 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church.
Just ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM, the last American military flight has left Afghanistan ending a 20-year war and leaving behind a lot of uncertainty. Plus --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was hours of agony.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lafitte is underwater in ways that we have never seen before.
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CHURCH: Hurricane Ida causes catastrophic damage across southeastern Louisiana and now a massive relief effort is under way.
And the European Union boots the U.S. off its safe travel list. We are live in Paris for the details.
Good to have you with us.
Well, Afghanistan is facing a new reality. The U.S. has ended its longest war in nearly 20-year military presence in the country with the Taliban back in power. Earlier a Taliban spokesman was among a group seen entering the Kabul airport just hours after the U.S. withdrawal. He later congratulated the people of Afghanistan saying, quote, this victory belongs to us all.
President Joe Biden will address the nation later today and discuss his decision to keep Tuesday's deadline even though many urged him to extend it further. And this image from the U.S. Defense Department captures the very last U.S. service member to stand on Afghan soil, the Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne. According to the Pentagon, more than 122,000 people were evacuated
from the Kabul airport, but nearly 200 Americans and many more Afghan allies were not able to get out. CNN's Alex Marquardt has more.
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ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just as the day of August 31st, the deadline to leave, began in Afghanistan, the announcement was made.
GEN. KENNETH MCKENZIE, U.S. CENTCOM COMMANDER: I'm here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals and vulnerable Afghans. The last C-17 lifted off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30th, this afternoon, at 3:29 p.m. East Coast time and the last manned aircraft is now clearing the airspace above Afghanistan.
MARQUARDT (voice-over): Central Command's General Frank McKenzie said the diplomatic sequel now begins, led by Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who insists the commitment to Afghanistan remains despite no diplomatic presence.
The final hours have been, U.S. officials say, the most dangerous, after a massive suicide bombing last week by ISIS-K that left scores dead, including 13 service members.
Early Monday morning, five rockets were fired at the Kabul airport. ISIS claimed responsibility. The Pentagon says its anti-rocket defense system engaged and no casualties were reported. The vehicle used to launch the rockets turned to ash.
It came just hours after U.S. Central Command said a drone targeted an ISIS vehicle with a large amount of explosives. The airstrike was in a residential Kabul neighborhood and CENTCOM said stopped an imminent threat on the airport.
MAJ. GEN. HANK TAYLOR, JOINT STAFF DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR REGIONAL OPERATIONS: There was a secondary explosion that assessed that what was there was going to be used in a high-profile attack.
MARQUARDT (voice-over): But the multiple explosions also killed civilians. A relative told CNN at least 10 were killed from a single family. Seven were children under 10 years old. Neighbors described a massive bang to CNN then everything was engulfed in smoke. They tried to put out the fires with water and took the dead and wounded to the hospital. The Pentagon says it's investigating.
JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Nobody wants to see that happen. But you know what else we didn't want to see happen. We didn't want to see happen what we believed to be a very real, a very specific, and a very imminent threat to the Hamid Karzai International Airport and to our troops operating at that airport.
MARQUARDT (voice-over): Until the final moments, the evacuation flights continued but slowed down. MARQUARDT (voice-over): On Sunday to Monday morning, 1,200 people were evacuated and U.S. planes. More than 123,000 have come out so far, including around 6,000 Americans, fewer than 250 Americans who want to get out remain, according to the State Department.
MARQUARDT: Those Americans who wanted to leave were not able to reach the airport. The military was ready to get them out until the last minute, but in the words of General McKenzie, we did not get everyone out we wanted.
It has been an extremely dangerous situation around the Kabul airport over the past few days.
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On top of the Americans, there are thousands of Afghan who are also desperate to get out. This is now a top priority for Secretary of State Tony Blinken who says that U.S. has gotten assurances from the Taliban that people will be able to leave.
Alex Marquardt, CNN, at the State Department.
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CHURCH: And in part of the Afghan capital, there were celebrations as the last U.S. military aircraft took off. A local reporter working with CNN said heavy gunfire could be heard and tracer fire out across the sky. Taliban fighters were seen on the streets firing automatic weapons into the air. A video on social media purported to show Taliban fighters walking toward the airport. Later they could be seen in the airport hangar viewing the military equipment left behind.
An "L.A. Times" Middle East bureau chief, Nabih Bulos, was at the airport when Taliban fighters entered a hangar housing U.S. military equipment including a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter and he spoke with CNN about what he witnessed.
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NABIH BULOS, MIDDLE EAST BUREAU CHIEF, L.A. TIMES: We took this video minutes after the last American plane had left. At that point you have the Taliban sort of massing around the sides of the airport. And when they saw that there were no more planes, they waited a bit and then went inside en masse. And you know, we were heading the first wave, we were good to go able to go. Afterwards the gate had been just a few minutes before manned by the Americans, and they went in. They were able to get in the hangars, the tarmac of course, and they were doing a full sweep of what they had basically been able now to commandeer. I mean they're reporting its virtually in their hands. So you know, they have taken the entire area now.
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CHURCH: And CNN's international security editor Nick Paton Walsh is following all the developments and joins me now from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Nick, what is the latest from there? NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Well, this is the
scene from which about half of that extraordinary evacuee airlift we've seen over the last week came. But it's also the site really from where the end of the United States longest war ended up. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar a huge stretch of desert frankly where your shoes melt on the tarmac, an incredibly hard place to put refugees over a protracted period of time.
And it's fair to say, I think they admit here the initial challenge was immense as tens of thousands of people poured out of the sky on these extraordinary C-17 aircraft, they've been repeatedly moving one after another. And clearly here one of the last aircraft out of Afghanistan landed. So, it's a very fraught moment I think for many here to feel the emotions of this coming to an end.
There have been 55,000 evacuees who have come through here so far but were told 39,000 of them have actually gone on their way to further destinations now leaving 16,000 or so here. The ultimate question actually in those numbers is how many are SIV applicants? That's going to be an important question for the Biden administration moving forward. So that they can explain whether they got the right people, how many of the right people they left behind and what they are going to do with those who may be equally deserving but weren't actually part of the official scheme.
But today is an extraordinary sight we've certainly seen in Kabul, video of Taliban on the airport itself. At some point towards midnight last night local time, those final U.S. aircraft departed from Afghanistan and I think for so many involved in this war over 20 years, a moment of great reflection, possibly sadness at how this last month has proven so chaotic despite the heroism and the valiance of getting so many people to safety from Afghanistan.
And then also, too, a moment possibly of anxiety as we now wait to see what Afghanistan looks like without any foreign presence in it. Even though the final presence of the United States on the airport was so reduced, it is now a country run almost exclusively by the Taliban. The Taliban looking for international assistance, looking for continued aid, looking for their airport to be up and running again. Maybe that will happen in the weeks ahead for civilian flights.
But here the extraordinary effort of the last week you can see in the sort of shear banks of planes that stretch at the horizon in front of me -- Rosemary.
CHURCH: Extraordinary. Nick Paton Walsh, many thanks.
And back in Washington, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they have mixed emotions about the end of America's longest war. They are relieved that U.S. troops are out of harm's way but concerned about what will happen to Afghanistan under the Taliban. Democrat Adam Smith chairs the House Armed Services Committee.
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[04:10:00] REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Look, if there was one sort of central failing in this exit, it was to not, you know, take a cold-eyed look at what was going on there and say the Taliban are going to take over, whether it is weeks or months, it's not going to be years. It's going to be days, weeks or months. And if that is the case, what do we need to do. And two big things, one, we need to pull more equipment out. Two, we needed to get people out sooner particularly the Afghan SIVs. That should have started much sooner than it did.
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CHURCH: And house Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is hoping to advance a bill today requiring a report on the number of Americans still in Afghanistan.
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REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): We need more people to know what's going on. We need to fan out across this nation and have more people join with us. So, if anyone is listening or watching now, we don't care of your party's affiliation. We don't care if you dislike what we stand for. But I know you stand for America. And I know you stand with bringing these Americans home. Let's have a plan to do that. Let's take politics out of it.
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CHURCH: The U.S. State Department believes 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan. Just last week White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it's difficult to get an exact number since Americans are not required to notify the U.S. government when they arrive in or leave any foreign country.
And earlier I asked CNN Military Analyst Colonel Cedric Leighton about U.S. security now that troops have left Afghanistan.
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COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: During the 20 years that we were in that country, we were able to actually make it impossible to almost impossible for terrorist groups to actually create a system where they could attack the West and especially the United States. Now the other thing that we have to look at I think in this case, Rosemary, is that when we have a situation like this, the real difficulty that you end up having is could you actually do something in a way that would prevent that kind of terrorist development of terrorist forces in Afghanistan from afar. And I think the answer is probably not. I would say that we have a very different environment that we're now dealing with and that difference will make it in some ways more difficult for the Taliban to govern and it will also make it easier for groups like ISIS-K to gain a foothold there.
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CHURCH: With regard to the fierce criticism of the U.S. retreat, Colonel Leighton said there probably could not have been an evacuation of this type and scale without chaos.
Hurricane Ida is now a tropical depression moving north from the U.S. Gulf coast. But the monster storm has left untold devastation. As daybreak approaches, more than a million homes and businesses in Louisiana will be waking up to yet another day without power along with tens of thousands more in Mississippi. And officials in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, say that it will likely be a month before the lights come back on.
Search and rescue operations are under way and already hundreds of people have been brought to safety. In some areas residents were trapped in their homes as the rising floodwaters reached up to 6 feet. At least two people were killed in the storm, but Louisiana's governor says that number will surely rise. The National Guard is helping with the search and rescue and federal aid is on its way. But the mayor of Jean Lafitte says help can't come soon enough.
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TOM KERNER JR., MAYOR OF JEAN LAFITTE, LOUISIANA (via phone): There are no roads, there is no ground through here. There's water with houses are poking out. And you all, highways are rescue water ways now. So, the first step is rescue. Second step, get the water out and third step is going to be trying to get back the power and trying to give these people some relief.
I've never seen water that high, never seen a current push in so fast. And just be so relentless. You know, at certain points 9 1/2 feet, and in other points 8 feet, 8 1/2 if pushed in one area it created such a major swell, and then once that swell started moving, you know, it came off a little bit, but still nothing that we've ever seen or even dreamed of seeing before.
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Just mega powerful storm hit us in the absolute worst spot. It's a once in a 100-year storm.
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CHURCH: And now people across Louisiana are describing the fear they felt as hurricane Ida came ashore, and the devastation they woke up to Monday morning. Take a listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 49-year-old Dart Stowell lives here and Dart was inside the house when it was destroyed, when it collapsed. He was on the second floor of the house and plunged 10 feet to the bottom of the house. He wasn't seriously hurt. He hurt his ankle, his hand, his foot, but he will be OK.
DART STOWELL, HOUSE COLLAPSED IN STORM: It was pretty tough. We were right on the eyewall as the eye crossed over and it seemed like it was never going to end. It was steady whipping and people lost their entire roofs. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was raining for a little while because it was
coming up the stairs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wasn't afraid of the water, but the wind kept blowing and I felt the walls in the house move.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The water was just coming in so fast, that, you know, it got to about knee level so quick, I didn't know if it was going to stay there or rise, so I just went up to the attic. And it didn't get too much higher than that, but it was scary. It came in all at once.
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CHURCH: Well, the storm may have moved on, but life-threatening flash flooding is still a concern in parts of Mississippi and Louisiana. And right now, areas in Alabama and Tennessee are getting a great deal of rain from this storm system. Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri is joining us now with the latest forecast. So, what are you seeing here?
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, CNN METEOROLOGIST: You know, Rosemary, it's a shell of its former self, but it's really, really important to note the incredible amount of rainfall in store still with the system. It still has some tropical characteristics here in the next couple of days. But as you noted here, some of these areas have seen as much as a foot of rainfall and of course we know much of the area in the dark, at least a million customers. So generally, about say 3 million to 4 million people across this region of Alabama and Louisiana and also the state of Mississippi that are in the dark. So, you put this together, you look at the weather pattern currently in place with people without power, we're seeing the heat advisories in place now with temperatures as high as 103 degrees that includes New Orleans and includes areas around Baton Rouge as well. Areas that have been devastated in recent days that are going to be excessively hot at least over the next 24 to 36 hours.
Now the rainfall amounts have also been as impressive as it gets here with upwards of 12 inches, some estimates put as much as 18 inches of rainfall down on the ground. And the concern moving forward is the amount of rainfall potentially in store not just across the South but as what is left of the system migrates off towards the North and East, the most densely populated corner of the U.S., that's an area we think we could see tremendous rainfall as well. And that's about a 1,200 mile stretch of land from Louisiana all the way out towards Cape Cod where we have these flood advisories in place there.
So you notice this, rainfall estimations here for the forecast do go right back up to maybe 6 plus inches, some areas potentially pushing close to 10 inches. That's in eastern Pennsylvania getting awfully close to Philadelphia, New York City, so some of the major metro cities will see what is left of the storm system. And I always try to emphasize the significance of that because when you are in an area where it is a lot of natural ground, the countryside, we know about 90 percent of what hits the ground is absorbed by the soil, about 10 percent of it becomes runoff. Now it is an extreme scenario in the south where we've had so much rain in recent weeks, a lot more in the way of runoff when we see flash flooding. But you bring it into an urban environment, a lot of concrete, what falls out of the sky about 55 percent of it translates into runoff. So that's the concern here, Rosemary, that we're going to see significant flooding in some of these major cities around the Northeast as this system here moves over that region.
And the tropics as active as it gets, we've got Kate out over the open waters, 90 percent chance Larry forms. Climatologically speaking, Rosemary, get this, this would be our 11th named storm of the season, that should happen on November 23rd. It is poised to happen here potentially the first of September. So, an incredible run of active weather in the tropics.
CHURCH: Unbelievable, isn't it? Pedram Javaheri, many thanks to you for keeping such a close eye on all of those details. We do appreciate it.
Well, in California the governor has just declared a state of emergency in three counties due to the Caldor fire. The fire which started more than two weeks ago has injured at least five people and forced thousands of others to flee their homes. More than 186,000 acres have burned and hundreds of structures have been destroyed since the fire started. Officials don't expect to have the fire fully contained until September 13th. Nearly two weeks from now.
You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. Still to come, some U.S. states have run out of hospital beds while others are running out of critical care items. The dire COVID numbers coming out of the Southern U.S., that's ahead.
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And the EU sends a message to travelers from countries with high COVID rates. Get vaccinated or stay away. We'll have a live report from Paris.
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CHURCH: Well, here in the United States, COVID-19 hospitalizations are climbing to levels we have not seen since last year. New data from the CDC shows unvaccinated individuals are being hospitalized at a rate 16 times greater than those who are fully vaccinated.
Officials in Mississippi say they effectively have zero hospital beds available. On Monday there were less than 10 ICU beds open across the entire state with a waiting list of infected patients.
Meantime we are seeing near record numbers of new COVID cases here in Georgia, the Georgia National Guard has been called into help hospitals. The state's public health department commissioner says the unvaccinated are suffering the most.
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DR. KATHLEEN TOOMEY, GEORGIA DEPT. OF PUBLIC HEALTH COMMISSIONER: We've seen the highest number of weekly outbreaks since the pandemic began, 170 outbreaks statewide with more than half of those outbreaks in K through 12 schools. The deaths and hospitalizations continue to be largely among unvaccinated. I can't say that enough. This vaccination, all three of them work very, very well to prevent against this Delta variant.
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CHURCH: America's COVID crisis has alarmed Europe. The European Union is removing the U.S. and other countries from the safe travel list due to rising cases and hospitalizations. CNN's Melissa Bell joins me now live from Paris. Good to see you, Melissa. So, what is this likely to mean for those Americans who did go out and get vaccinated?
MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: Well, they may yet be lucky, Rosemary. This is just guidance that's being begin by the European Council to European countries advising that nonessential travel should now be restricted from the United States, a bunch of other countries, also removed from that safe list, but that is just advice. Now it will be down to individual member states to decide what they do specifically for those for instance who have been vaccinated. So, you know that here Europe -- here in France in particular, there's been a push to have people who are vaccinated be given in a sense the right to go about their daily lives.
So, you need your COVID pass to get into restaurants, you need your COVID pass to get into bars. Once you been vaccinated, you get access to almost anything you'd like to. And it could be that that logic is extended member state by member state to those who've been vaccinated.
But for the time being the advice is that nonessential travel for the United States should be limited and that's what the member states are going to have to consider. That of course has implications for tourism but it also has implications, Rosemary, for families who've been separated by this pandemic. It seems simply to keep coming back wave after wave.
And one last point that I think is interesting, is that it isn't just that the situation in the United States has deteriorated in terms of infection rates compared to the situation here in Europe, it's that Europe has now vaccinated a greater proportion of its population with at least one dose than have Americans -- Rosemary.
CHURCH: All right, and Melissa Bell joining us live from Paris, many thanks for the details on that.
Well, Israel says it's now the first country to offer COVID booster shots to anyone 12 or older. More than 2 million Israelis have already received their third vaccine dose. Israel is battling a resurgence wave of COVID infections, but numbers show the new round of shots seems to be working. The virus transmission rate has been declining as the booster rollout ramps up. Well, Pfizer says that it will know just how well its booster shots
work when it releases data from a trial in late September or early October. U.S. health officials have already announced a plan to begin offering booster shots for people who received Pfizer or Moderna vaccines starting the week of September 20th. However, that plan still needs approval from the CDC and the FDA.
In Belgium, researchers are releasing new evidence about COVID-19 vaccines. They tested 1,600 health care workers and found Moderna's vaccine produces a higher antibody response than Pfizer/BioNTech vaccinations. But they said more research would be needed to show whether this means Moderna's shots are better at protecting people.
Researchers in South Africa are closely watching a new COVID variant first detected back in May which now has spread to seven other countries. They are calling it C-12 and scientists are not sure how dangerous its mutations could become. So far the variant has shown signs of increased transmissibility and it's too early to designate it as a variant of interest.
Well, still to come, those who have endured hurricane Ida's devastation in Louisiana now face a new threat, the sweltering summer heat. That's next.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know you're anxious to be here, to check your homes. But we are asking that everybody not come home yet.
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