Days after horrifying visuals of two people falling from the sky after they attempting to cling onto a US plane departing from Kabul, an organisation that works with sporting groups in Afghanistan has said that a young national level footballer had died during the incident.
Afghanistan’s General Directorate for Sport broke the news in a Facebook post.
“It is with great sadness that we announce that Zaki Anwari, one of the players of the national junior football team of the country, died in a bad accident. The late Anwari, who was among hundreds of young people who wanted to leave the country, fell down in an accident from the air and lost his life,” the organisation said, issuing its condolences.
It is not yet confirmed whether Anwari was among the two figures seen falling from the plane. Other reports said he died after getting stuck in the landing mechanism of the aircraft, his remains having been found stuck in the landing gear mechanism of the US Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft, that had made a desperate take-off from Kabul’s airport even as it was swarmed by hundreds of desperate Afghans seeking a way to flee the capital after it was taken over by the Taliban.
Afghanistan's General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports issued a consolation on Facebook, saying, “May he rest in heaven and pray to God for his family, friends and sports colleagues.”
On Tuesday, the US military confirmed that it had found human remains in the landing wheel of a C-17 aircraft that had left Kabul during an evacuation mission.
A statement by the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations said that before the aircrew could even offload the cargo, the plane was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians who had breached the perimeter of the airport.
“Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible,” the Air Force said.
Human remains were later discovered in the wheel well of the C-17 once it returned to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. The C-17 has since been impounded to allow crews to collect the remains and inspect the aircraft before it returns to flight.
