Shortly after the Taliban captured Kabul, more than 600 Afghans – men, women and children – crowded into a large US military plane, the scene of a dramatic air evacuation, according to a photograph that went viral.
Posted by Defense One military news site, The image was taken inside a US Air Force Boeing C-17 transport aircraft. The evacuation of the Afghans squeezed into the huge hold of the aircraft Sunday evening had been approved by the American authorities, according to the site. Some 640 Afghans were on board, the US military said.
“The Crew Made the Decision to Go:” Inside Reach 871, A US C-17 Packed With 640 Afghans Trying to Escape the Taliban | @TaraCopp and @MarcusReports https://t.co/lf3LajxzzX pic.twitter.com/JH5Yrkwet4
– Defense One (@DefenseOne) August 17, 2021
“The crew made the decision to go”
Such a large number of passengers was not expected in a single flight, a senior US defense official told Defense One: many desperate people climbed inside at the last moment by the ramp still half open to the rear of the plane. “The crew made the decision to go” rather than forcing them back down, the official said.
This scene occurred as Taliban fighters took to the streets of Kabul and panicked residents rushed to the airport to try to find a flight overseas. “The unusually high number of passengers aboard this aircraft (…) was the result of a dynamic security environment that demanded quick decisions from the crew,” said Karen Roxberry, spokesperson for US Central, in a statement. Command, the US command center managing operations in the region. “In the end, this made it possible to evacuate these passengers safely from the country.”
Several planes
Among those in the photo is a baby holding a bottle in a woman’s lap. Several other people appear, with young children. Almost no physical possession is visible among the passengers, except for a small suitcase and a backpack in the foreground. The US military did not specify its destination.
The flight, which Defense One said had the area code Reach 871, landed in Qatar early Monday morning, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. This C-17 is not the only plane to have carried so many Afghans out of the country, and several planes have left Kabul with similar figures, according to the official quoted by Defense One. It is also not the first time that the Boeing C-17, the workhorse of the United States Army, has carried out such a major evacuation. In 2013, an American C-17 embarked more than 670 people in the eastern Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan.
Chaos and despair
Kabul airport was the scene of scenes of chaos and desperation on Monday. The tarmac and runways were overrun with thousands of people hoping to board a flight out of the country. Many did not have clearances to take evacuation flights, nor tickets for commercial flights, or even visas. In harrowing videos posted on social media, hundreds of people run past a accelerating C-17, some clinging to the sides of the plane.
Another video shows attack helicopters hovering over the crowds at low altitude, in an apparent attempt to clear the runway for a plane. The Afghan media reported several deaths, fallen from planes to which they had clung during take-off. One person perished in the landing gear shaft of a C-17 that took off from Kabul, the US daily said Washington post and the Politico site.