640 Afghans fled in the hold of an American plane

After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, several images of desperation spread and shocked the world. One of them was the one published by the Defense One website, in which he is observed 640 people who fled Kabul in the hold of a Boeing belonging to the United States Air Force.

On the picture we see them standing and crowded inside the C-17 Globemaster III (RCH 871) which took them to Qatar. Beyond the fact that it is a ship designed to carry 150 comfortably seated passengers, the gravity of the situation in the Asian country has made it necessary to take such a decision to save as many people as possible.

Beyond extreme measureThis flight was not a record for this type of aircraft, since in 2013 another C-17 carried 670 people fleeing a typhoon in the Philippines.

In the afternoon of Sunday, a video had even circulated on social networks in which we saw how hundreds of Afghans they sneaked into the plane by the semi-open ramp.

The number of passengers was confirmed to Defense One by a representative of the US Air Force, after the plane landed. at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.

The same source even revealed that it was not the only flight with hundreds of dissident Afghans, and that even there could have been one with even more people than the 640 from the viral photo.

Chaos and terror at the airport

Scenes from despair and panic They occurred throughout Monday at Hamid Karzai Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, where thousands were trying to flee the Taliban and foreign diplomats to leave the country on military planes.

It already exists more than a dozen confirmed deaths at the airport, after the crowd began to climb the emergency stairs on the handles of the planes to try to get up, and the US military fired in the air in an attempt to contain them.

The Pentagon reported that US forces killed two gunmen. The avalanche also killed people, including a 14-year-old teenager. Three other people died after cling to the wings of planes and fall into the void.

Even evacuation should have been stopped to be able to evacuate the people who flooded the runway. Apache gunships attempted to clear the runway of people running behind planes about to take off and slow them down.

The Taliban say “the war in Afghanistan is over” after the insurgents take control of Kabul. They assure Afghans who try to flee the airport that “they can go home without fear of reprisals ”.

But the population fears the Taliban militiamen. The generation on the run is the one that grew up under his administration, and during the occupation they went to college and completed their education.

The image of the Taliban in the presidential office of former President Ahraf Ghani, with their weapons and turbans had an air of “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci.

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