A U.S. Marine brought an Afghan child to safety over the walls of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in video footage.
A U.S. Marine brought an Afghan baby to safety over the walls of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan in video footage that emerged on Thursday. A Marine with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit was handed the infant from outside the airport walls by the child’s father as a crowd of Afghans watched, according to officials. As has been the case outside the airport all week, a large crowd of Afghans had formed outside the walls hoping to gain access to the airport to escape Kabul after the capital city fell to the Taliban on Sunday. Taliban checkpoints are set up throughout the city, however, and they sometimes turn people away violently. The scene has become all too common in the past week, as several videos have shown militants blocking airport gates with trucks or firing rounds into the air as Afghan families cower in fear. “We are mindful that the checkpoints there can be obstacles to entry for people that need entry and are qualified for entry,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday. “So, we’re going to continue to work this with our communications with the Taliban in the hopes that we can clear up any stumbling blocks to that processing.
