This incredible photo shows around 640 panic-stricken Afghan refugees crammed inside the US Air Force military cargo plane leaving Kabul on Sunday.
Photos obtained by Defense One, the US military and security website, show Afghan citizens cheek to jowl on the floor of the US Air Force C-17 Globemaster 111 in which they hung onto cargo straps serving as makeshift seatbelts.
According to the website, the flight from the Afghan capital to Qatar had one of the largest number of passengers on board a military aircraft used by the US Defense forces or its allies in almost 30 years.
Flight tracking software shows the plane belongs to the 436th Air Wing, based at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, according to Defense One.
“The C-17, using the call sign Reach 871, was not intending to take on such a large load, but panicked Afghans who had been cleared to evacuate pulled themselves onto the C-17’s half-open ramp, a video posted late Sunday showed,” the website reported.
“Instead of trying to force those refugees off the aircraft, “the crew made the decision to go,” a defense official told Defense One. “Approximately 640 Afghan civilians disembarked the aircraft when it arrived at its destination,” one defense official said.
“The flight was one of several that was able to take off with hundreds of people aboard, and some of the others may have had an even larger load than 640,” a military official told the website.
The successful evacuation preceded horrific scenes at the Kabul airport on Monday in which throngs of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan were photographed trying to board flights. Video footage has emerged that purportedly shows Afghans falling to their deaths after trying to cling to a plane after takeoff.
Other footage appears to show people desperately trying to cling to moving US aircraft.
There are unconfirmed reports of up to seven people who were killed during the chaos at the airport while an American official confirmed to the Reuters agency that US forces were “forced to fire into the air to prevent Afghans running on to tarmac to board military flights”.
