This is an archive article published on August 18, 2021

Human remains found in landing gear of military flight from Kabul, says US Air Force

Videos of the incident, including images of people falling from the aircraft as it took off, were widely viewed on social media. The images captured the initial chaos of a US-directed evacuation that followed the Taliban's takeover of the country.

Some hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul (AP)

By: AP

2 min readAug 18, 2021 07:34 AM IST First published on: Aug 18, 2021 at 07:09 AM IST

The US Air Force has said that its Office of Special Investigations is reviewing an incident at the Kabul airport on Monday in which multiple people were killed when hundreds of Afghan civilians desperate to leave the country swarmed a C-17 cargo plane as it was attempting to take off.

The Air Force did not say how many people died. It said human remains were found in the plane’s wheel well after it landed at al-Udeid Air Base in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Videos of the incident, including images of people falling from the aircraft as it took off, were widely viewed on social media. The images captured the initial chaos of a US-directed evacuation that followed the Taliban’s takeover of the country.