The shocking image of the hold of a military plane full of Afghans who managed to escape from the Taliban

The United States Air Force safely evacuated about 640 afghans of Accept Sunday night, according to US defense officials. After the chaos that was experienced at the airport, an image obtained by the site Defense One showed passengers crammed inside the C-17 Globemaster III (RCH 871), a craft designed to carry 150 comfortably seated passengers.

According to the authorities, this flight almost reaches the record for the highest number of people who have flown on the C-17, which occurred in 2013, when a plane of these characteristics evacuated 670 people fleeing a typhoon in the Philippines.

In the face of the panic that was experienced at the airport with the withdrawal of US troops and the seizure of power by the Taliban, Afghans who had been authorized to evacuate began to get on the ship when they noticed that the plane’s ramp remained semi-open, as can be seen in a video that circulated on social networks during the last hours.

“The crew made the decision to leave,” a defense official told Defense One. And they indicated: “Approximately 640 Afghan civilians disembarked from the aircraft when it reached its destination.” The Afghans flew from Kabul to Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base sitting on the floor of the plane’s spacious hold.

The flight was one of several that was able to take off with hundreds of people on board, and some of the others may have had a load even greater than 640, according to the same source.

Thousands of people mobilized this Monday to airport of Kabul and staged panic scenes in a desperate attempt to escape from Afghanistan that, after 20 years of war, is back under Taliban control after a lightning offensive by the insurgents that triggered the collapse of the government and the flight abroad of the president, Ashraf Ghani.

Videos uploaded to social media showed hundreds of people waiting on the track already groups of desperate young people clinging to commercial and military aircraft to escape the country. According to what was reported by the ANSA Agency, at least five people would have died at Kabul airport, possibly crushed by crowds.