-Over 600 Afghans cram into US Cargo Plane in flight to escape from Kabul
DM Monitoring
BERLIN: Images of throngs trying to flee Kabul are shameful for Western nations, Germany’s president said on Tuesday, as desperate people clamoured at the airport after the Taliban takeover.
“We are experiencing a human tragedy for which we share responsibility,” said President Frank-Walter Steinmeier after the Western-backed government in Kabul collapsed.
Germany, which had the second largest military contingent in Afghanistan after the United States, wants to airlift thousands of German-Afghan dual nationals as well as rights activists, lawyers and people who worked with foreign forces.
“The images of despair at Kabul airport shame the political West,” Steinmeier, whose post is largely ceremonial, said in a statement at the German presidential palace.
Earlier, more than 600 Afghan men, women and children, crouch and cram against each other on the floor of a United States military plane as it leaves Kabul after the city was seized by the Taliban. A photograph showing the Afghan civilians, some clutching luggage, others bottle-feeding infants, on the C-17 cargo aircraft on Sunday has gone viral on social media.
A US official said about 640 people clambered onto the flight from Kabul, when thousands of people, desperate to flee the country, surged to the airport in the Afghan capital.
“The unusually high number of passengers was the result of a dynamic security environment that necessitated quick decision making by the crew which ultimately ensured these passengers were quickly taken outside the country,” the official said.
According to the manufacturer, Boeing, the C-17 Globemaster III can carry 134 passengers, including 54 on side seats and 80 on pallets on the floor.
Many of the Afghans climbed on board the plane via a half-open ramp before the flight left for Qatar with one of the highest numbers of passengers ever flown on such an aircraft, US defence and security news site Defense One reported.
Other distressing videos and photos have emerged from Kabul airport, where witnesses say several people have died, and show people clambering up overhead gangways and clinging to the landing gear of taxiing planes in desperate attempts to flee.
For some observers, the image inside the C-17 plane was seen as a sign of hope and the bravery of the evacuation crew.
“For all the failings of this week, some unalloyed good in this,” said Blake Herzinger, a Singapore-based security analyst, who shared the image on Twitter.
But for others, it served as a reminder of the calamitous evacuation efforts from Afghanistan after the US withdrew its forces after 20 years of war and the Taliban swept to power in days rather than the months predicted by US intelligence.
“We need many more such planes,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch.
