U.S. troops have started withdrawing from Kabul's airport, marking the beginning of the end of the two-week effort to get foreigners and their local allies out of Afghanistan after the country's capital fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15. The vast majority of NATO nations have flown their troops out of Afghanistan after more than two decades although the United States said its airlifts would continue until the Tuesday deadline even as the number of American troops at the airport starts to dwindle. Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow, published a video on Twitter from the airport saying it was "time to close this phase of the operation now." Britain carried out its final evacuation flights on Saturday. As everyone starts getting ready for the next phase, Taliban forces started closing off the airport to most Afghans on Saturday.

Smoke rises near a stadium where some Islamic State militants are holed up after an air strike by coalition forces, in Raqqa, Syria, Oct. 12, 2017. Around 100 fighters from the Islamic State group have surrendered since Friday in Raqqa, with the Syrian city said to be on the brink of falling to a U.S.-led coalition. Meanwhile, a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province on Thursday killed 14 ISIS militants, Afghan officials said Saturday. In Raqqa, all of the combatants were "removed from the city," a spokesman for the U.S-led coalition against ISIS told Reuters on Saturday. ISIS was said to be on the verge of defeat in Raqqa, the report said.

An alleged ISIS plot involving a drone attack on Turkey's Incirlik air base -- which is used by the U.S. Air Force -- was foiled Thursday when Turkish authorities arrested a Russian national suspected of being an Islamist militant. Renad Bakiev, who previously traveled to Syria, was detained in the southern city of Adana for planning the drone attack, police said in a statement. Officials said he admitted to surveying the Incirlik air base to plan out his strike, and attempted to attack Americans -- but he was unsuccessful. Adana police said Bakiev had ties to ISIS and also intended to assault the local Alevi community -- a religious minority ISIS regards as heretics. The religious group is also the largest one in Turkey and is an offshoot of Shia Islam.