PRESSURE MOUNTS TO END KABUL FLIGHT STANDOFF; BIDEN TOURS DAMAGE IN N.J., N.Y.

WASHINGTON — Veterans’ groups, Democratic lawmakers and Afghans called Tuesday for urgent Biden administration action on a weeklong standoff that has left hundreds of would-be evacuees from Afghanistan desperate to board waiting charter flights out of the Taliban-ruled country.

They say several dozen Americans, along with a much larger number of U.S. green card holders and family members, are among vulnerable Afghans waiting to board prearranged charter flights at the airport in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif that are being prevented from leaving.

“We think we are in some kind of jail,” said one Afghan woman among the would-be evacuees gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif. She said elderly American citizens and parents of Afghan Americans in the U.S. are among those being blocked from boarding evacuation planes.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the U.S. was working with the Taliban to resolve the matter. He rejected an assertion from a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, over the weekend that the standoff at Mazar-e-Sharif was turning into a “hostage situation” for Americans.

“We’ve been assured all American citizens and Afghan citizens with valid travel documents will be allowed to leave,” Blinken said in Doha, Qatar, a major transit point for last month’s frantic U.S. military-led evacuations from Afghanistan.

Later Tuesday, 12 Democratic lawmakers added to the pressure for evacuees, in a letter urging the administration to disclose its plans for getting out all of the hundreds of atrisk people remaining in Afghanistan, including American citizens.

“Our staff have been working around the clock responding to urgent pleas from constituents whose families and colleagues are seeking to flee Afghanistan, and they urgently require timely, post-withdrawal guidance to best assist those in need,” Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Gerald Connolly and nine other Democratic lawmakers wrote.

Meanwhile, the Taliban on Tuesday announced an all-male interim government for Afghanistan stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule from the 1990s.

Appointed to the key post of interior minister was Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty and is believed to still be holding at least one American hostage, Mark Frerichs, a civil contractor from west suburban Lombard.