the story of the plane that left Kabul with nearly 700 passengers and people on the wings

As Kabul airport emerged from chaos on Tuesday, an image synthesizes the fear of the Taliban and the abandonment of the Afghans, after their rapid victory and their arrival in the capital: a photograph, taken from inside an American military flight, from Kabul.

the C-17 Globemaster, with a Reach 871 code, it was carrying around 640 Afghans, allegedly more than five times your payload suggested, after hundreds of desperate people flooded the plane on Monday.

The plane landed in Qatar, two hours later.

The plane in the photo pertenece al 436th Air Wing, which is based at Dover Air Force Base in the US state of Delaware.

A defense official told Defense One, an agency that has photo credit, that the heavy burden it had not been planned. But the terrified Afghans, who had been allowed to leave, had climbed on the semi-open ramp from the plane.

The situation had become uncontrollable for the crew and it is the captain who decided to take off in these conditions.

Rather than forcing them, “the crew made the decision to leave,” the official said. He added that while early reports indicated that the plane was carrying around 800 people, it was later confirmed that around 640 was the real number.

They were among thousands of people who arrived at Kabul airport on Monday, desperate to leave Afghanistan, after the Taliban took Kabul over the weekend.

According to U.S. defense officials, the plane took off from Kabul International Airport amid the chaos on Monday. We believe we are the greatest number of people who has never flown on the C-17. A military cargo plane, which was used by the United States and its allies to almost 30 years.

Some clung to another plane while taxiing and video footage showed at least two people fall off the plane during take off. Other planes were invaded and took off with the Afghans seated on the ground.

The Pentagon has stopped traffic

But it was not the only one. Hundreds of Afghans occupied other civilian charters, which climbed the emergency flight ladder at Kabul airport and sat on the floor of the plane.

The Afghans had scaled the bomb wall that surrounds the airport and entered the runway, where the planes were rolling. They crossed in front of the military planes, without preventing them from taking off. They were afraid of being abandoned.

Many had been accepted on the West’s to quit list, but trust had been shattered during these chaotic hours. The urgency was to flee Kabul, that the Taliban did not retaliate. They thought they were going to be left on the ground. The image of the despair of a people abandoned to their fate has gone around the world.

Many planes have stopped when the track was flooded with people. Others continued to march while the Afghans they were hanging from the wings and they climbed on the turbines. Two of them fell from the sky, when another plane took off. They looked like two black dots in the sky.

After this horror, the Pentagon has decided to cancel military and commercial flights until they can clear the runway.

The chaos was such that the Taliban arrived at the airport to bring order. There was an exchange of gunfire and two American soldiers killed two Taliban, who were shooting at the doors of the airport to let people in.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter that the group’s fighters were strictly ordered not to harm anyone. “No one’s life, property and honor will be harmed, but must be protected by the mujahedin,” he wrote.

British evacuees, return

The situation at Kabul airport “is stabilizing,” said British Foreign Minister Dominique Raab, as crowds try to flee Afghanistan.

Under a shower of criticism, diplomats and officials from the British Embassy in Afghanistan, arrived at the Brize Norton base in Great Britain, were sent to Kabul manage the people to be evacuated.

A reaction to the anger of British society, to the abandonment suffered by the Afghans, who aided their military forces in the war and who must be saved.

The British soldiers were the first to criticize this theft and the inhumane gesture of not recovering 1,500 Afghans who had helped them in their mission, whether as employees, translators or contractors.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who took vacation on Saturday before the fall of Kabul, to announce resettlement plan for Afghans ‘the most needy’ , after the seizure of power by the Taliban.

Paris, correspondent

ap