- Desperate Afghan civilians interrupt military evacuation.
- Some of the people killed had clung to a US military transport plane as it took off.
- US troops struggled to hold back the crowds overnight, and reports surfaced of gunfire and stampeding breaking out.
Seven Afghan civilians have been killed at Kabul airport mayhem, including some people who fell from a departing American transport aircraft, and all flights out of the Afghan capital have been interrupted by crowds on the runway, US officials in Kabul report.
Throughout Sunday night, US troops brought in to protect the evacuation of American diplomats and workers struggled to keep hordes of desperate Afghans off the runway at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport, now the only lifeline between Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and the outside world.
Some of the people killed had clung to a US military transport plane as it took off, but fell to their deaths shortly after takeoff plunging to their deaths.
Commercial flights out of Kabul were suspended on Sunday, but droves of desperate Afghans crowded onto the airport’s single runway regardless, in a last-ditch bid to catch a flight out of the Afghan capital.
American troops struggled to hold back the crowds overnight, and reports surfaced of gunfire and stampeding breaking out.
