Who are the people who clung to US aircraft at Kabul airport?
A video of people falling from US aircraft has shocked the world
Washington: Thousands of people gathered on Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport seeking to escape, including some who clung to a US military plane as it taxied on the runway.
The purported video of at leas two men falling from the flying aircraft shocked the world on Monday as the clips surfaced online.
When CNN asks Jonathan Finer, Deputy National Security Advisor, to comment on the chaos at the airport in Kabul, he said, “These are not just the people at the airport these are people in particular categories.”
Finer said, these are “people who worked alongside US mission for the last two decades. Many of whom are in the process of applying for special immigrant visa, a program created by the congress to enable people who face additional risk because they supported our mission, they ought to get out of the country.”
He explained, “We are also going to evacuate locally employed staff of our mission and embassy.”
Meanwhile, At least five people were reported killed in the chaos, which forced a pause in evacuation flights. A witness said it was unclear if they had been shot or killed in a stampede. A U.S. official told Reuters two gunmen had been killed by U.S. forces there over the past 24 hours