Pentagon on halting Afghan flights, Kabul strike

All flights of Afghan evacuees into the United States have been halted for another seven days at the request of the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, due to measles cases at three different U.S. bases, the Pentagon said Monday.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday that three cases of measles were diagnosed among Afghans arriving at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, one at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and one at Fort Pickett in Virginia.

The U.S. initially halted the U.S.-bound flights on Friday when the measles cases were first discovered.

Kirby said the seven-day extension of the pause in flights begins on Monday and that all efforts are being made to do contact tracing to determine who at any of the bases may have been exposed. He said patients are being housed separately and are getting medical care.

Kirby said that all evacuees are receiving any necessary immunizations – including for measles - as a condition of their "humanitarian parole."

"Critical immunizations, including MMR, are being administered for Afghans at safe havens on military bases in the United States. We will soon be vaccinating Afghans for MMR while they are still overseas," Kirby said.

The seven-day extension further complicates what has already been a difficult and frustrating process for evacuees fleeing Afghanistan and trying to get to the U.S. As an example, as many as 10,000 evacuees are at a temporary processing site at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where there is a 10-day limit on their stay in the country.

During the last days of the U.S.-led evacuation, officials confirmed that an American drone strike blew up a vehicle carrying "multiple suicide bombers" from Afghanistan's Islamic State affiliate before they could attack Kabul's international airport.

Shortly after, a statement from U.S. Central Command said that the U.S. is aware of reports of civilian casualties and is assessing the results of the strike.

"I'm not aware of any plans to put investigators on the ground. Central Command is still assessing the results of that strike... They have a variety of means to do that," Kirby said.

An Afghan official has said three children were killed in the strike near Kabul's airport. Witnesses to the blast say several citizens were killed or wounded.