People Fall to Their Deaths from Departing Plane amid Chaos and Desperation at Afghanistan Airport: Reports
WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Afghan people climb up on a plane and sit by the door as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on Aug. 16 after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan's 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city's airport trying to flee.
Chaos and panic reportedly spread through Afghanistan's capital over the weekend and into Monday as the United States evacuated staff from its embassy and the Taliban swept into the area while the American military completed its planned withdrawal.
Afghans were seen crowding into the Kabul airport, scaling concrete walls and racing across the tarmac as they attempted to board international flights in the shadow of a rising insurgency which controlled the country before 9/11.
Photos from Kabul as well as witness accounts and reporting by the Associated Press, Reuters and elsewhere documented the rapidly unfolding situation, in which new details were confirmed seemingly by the minute.
One man who works at the Kabul airport and who could not give his name for fear of reprisal from the Taliban, told PEOPLE the scene was one of widespread disarray.
"So many people are trying to get out. On Sunday it was a big chaos," he said. "They climbed the fences into the airport. Big concrete walls and there is barbed wire. People climbed up the concrete walls in between where the concrete is. I saw people on the airport side of the wall after they landed. Some were hurt."
WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Kabul airport
The man described seeing someone who injured himself after landing hard on his foot: "When [the man] got up he was trying not to let this stop him, but he kept stopping to hold his ankle. He walked away hopping on one leg. People ran past him. I felt from his body the feeling of defeat. He would not be at the head of the line any more. He was one of the first to climb the wall, and now he was at the back.
"What happened to him? I don't know. He is gone."
Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Thousands of Afghans rush to the Hamid Karzai International Airport as they try to flee the capital of Kabul on Aug. 16.
"There was so much running and fear. Everyone wanted to get to a plane," the Afghan airport worker told PEOPLE. "They didn't have tickets I don't think. They did not come in through the boarding gates like normal. They just ran. They ran to the planes, hoping to get on any way they could. Just push their way on. Then there was confusion, and the sound of gunfire. People ran even faster. They knocked each other down, there were so many running at one time."
They ran so fast, the worker added, that they paid no attention to the shoes on their feet or any belongings they may have had with them.
"People dropped the things they had with them," he said. "So much of their lives, dropped on the ground at the airport. Pieces of lives are scattered on the ground like so much trash."
According to the AP, officials said that at least seven people had died in the maelstrom at Kabul's airport. Among those were some people who fell from the outside of a U.S. military plane after clinging to it as it took off.
Video circulated widely on social media that seemed to show several bodies fall from the plane as it rose into the sky.
This is, perhaps, one of the saddest images I've seen from #Afghanistan. A people who are desperate and abandoned. No aid agencies, no UN, no government. Nothing. pic.twitter.com/LCeDEOR3lR
— Nicola Careem (@NicolaCareem) August 16, 2021
The airport worker told PEOPLE that he heard about the men falling from the airplane but did not witness it firsthand.
Still, the scene he did see was terrifying, he said. "It was very hard to see this. It is hard to see so many people so scared all at once. I am scared too. ... I don't want to leave the airport."
Like those attempting to leave Kabul, the airport worker said he, too, feared the Taliban. "They are not the kind of people you can reason with. If you do something they don't like, you are dead. Just like that. No discussion, only death."
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani himself had fled the country on Sunday, as U.S. Embassy personnel lowered the American flag and evacuated to the airport.
The Department of Defense said its priority as the military prepared to exit Afghanistan was working to evacuate diplomatic staff as well as up to 30,000 Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants — though the evacuation efforts were hindered by the situation on the ground as President Joe Biden temporarily ordered an increased force into Kabul.
One woman told the AP that she saw U.S. troops spraying gas and firing into the air in an attempt to disperse a crowd of people attempting to climb aboard a plane.
The Wall Street Journal, citing a U.S. official, reported that American troops shot and killed two armed men at the airport and that at least three Afghans were run over and killed by an Air Force jet evacuating personnel from the airport.
Witnesses told Reuters they saw five bodies of people they believed to be dead loaded into cars. (The Department of Defense did not respond to specific questions on Monday regarding these reports.)
Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Afghanistan
The administration's handling of the exit drew widespread rebuke, particularly from Republicans.
Critics said the White House and military had been caught unacceptably off-guard by the Taliban's speed and strength and the mishandling of the withdrawal would only foster future crises and weaken U.S. power abroad.
"America's two-decade involvement in Afghanistan has had many authors. … But as the monumental collapse our own experts predicted unfolds in Kabul today, responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our current Commander-in-Chief," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
Biden officials acknowledged being surprised by the timeline of the country's collapse — something Biden said in July was "highly unlikely" — but insisted they had sufficient military personnel available to control the situation and that it remained in the country's interest to exit an unpopular and, in their words, fruitless conflict.
Speaking on Meet the Press Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Chuck Todd that the situation in Kabul was "very fluid" and that the primary focus of the U.S. government was that ensuring American embassy personnel were "safe and secure."
"We've been very clear with the Taliban that any effort on their part to interrupt our operations, to attack our forces, to attack our personnel, would be met with a very strong, decisive response," Blinken said. "And that's exactly why the president sent 5,000 forces in to assure that we can proceed in a safe and orderly manner."
MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Kabul airport
On Sunday, American military officials said some 6,000 American troops were either in the Kabul airport or en route, with additional forces on standby in Kuwait.
A defense official told various media outlets on Monday that the head of U.S. Central Command met face-to-face with senior Taliban leaders to urge their fighters not to interfere with the American military's evacuation operations at the Kabul airport.
The ease with which the Taliban took hold of the area was startling to many, particularly in light of the 20-year campaign in which the U.S. and its allies attempted to transform the country's government and bolster its security forces. The U.S. invaded following the Taliban's harboring of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Prior to that, the Taliban had ruled Afghanistan under strict Islamic law in the wake of a never-resolved civil war.
As the Journal reported, many of the thousands of Afghans who descended on the Kabul airport in a bid to escape the Taliban had previously worked for American forces.
"We spent 20 years, tens of billions of dollars training the [Afghan security forces], giving them equipment, giving them support of U.S. forces, for 20 years," the White House's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Monday in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America.
Sullivan continued, "The question facing the president back in April, and again as we've gone forward, is should U.S. men and women be put into the middle of another country's civil war when their own army won't fight to defend them? And his answer to that question was no."
The desperation is complete. Afghans don’t want to be left behind as US evacuates. pic.twitter.com/efZgNcyzpU
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 16, 2021
As the Afghan airport worker explained to PEOPLE, the panic of the weekend had quieted somewhat, though it remained unclear for how long.
"The American military says it will keep things calm at the airport," he said. "What happens when they leave? The Taliban will wait for the Americans to leave, and then what? What about the rest of us?"
He continued: "I have to get myself and my wife onto a plane before it is too late. I need to get her into the airport, even if she has to sleep on the floor while we are here. We don't know what will happen to us or to anyone. We need a miracle."
