As the Taliban’s relentless push to seize cities across Afghanistan continues, the United States negotiators warned the extremist group that they will not receive any foreign aid if they attack the American Embassy in Kabul.

The Taliban’s march has put embassies in Kabul on high alert for a surge of violence in coming months, or even weeks, and forced consulates and other diplomatic missions in the country to shut down.

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Meanwhile, the effort, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy in talks with the Taliban, seeks to stave off a full evacuation of the US embassy.

“Let me be very clear about this: The embassy remains open,” Ned Price, US State Department spokesman said, according to the New York Times input. “And we plan to continue our diplomatic work in Afghanistan.” 

A third official said that the Taliban would forfeit any legitimacy — and, in turn, foreign aid — if it attacked Kabul or took over Afghanistan’s government by force.

As of Thursday, there were roughly 4,200 staffers at the embassy, but most of those are Afghan nationals, according to the State Department.

However, the State Department announced it was sending home an unspecified number of the 1,400 Americans stationed at the embassy.

The embassy also urged Americans who were not working for the US government to immediately leave Afghanistan on commercial flights. But the decision to evacuate a significant number of embassy staff and bring in thousands of additional US troops is a sign of waning confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to hold off the Taliban surge.

The Biden administration has not ruled out a full embassy evacuation.

Should the Taliban show to be more intent on causing destruction than a cease-fire, American officials are attempting to assess when they will need to totally evacuate the embassy.

Meanwhile, three thousand fresh US troops were rushing to Kabul on Friday in a temporary deployment to speed evacuation flights for some American diplomats and thousands of Afghans, according to AP input.