The United States will use aircraft from commercial airlines to accelerate the evacuation from Afghanistan. This has been announced by a spokesman for the Biden government.
The aircraft were 18 aircraft, including American Airlines and Delta. These aircraft will not fly directly to and from Kabul, but will carry people who have already been removed from Afghanistan.
The government thinks it needs the aircraft to meet the self-imposed deadline of 31 August. By then, the US wants to get more than 10 thousand Americans and 50 thousand Afghans out of Afghanistan. A lack of aircraft is one of the slowing factors – besides the chaos and insecurity on and around the airport, which is guarded by thousands of American soldiers, among others.
It is only the third time that the so-called ‘civil Reserve Air Fleet’ is deployed. This happened earlier during the Gulf War, in 1990, and during the invasion of Iraq, in 2002. In both cases, it was a raid. The US Department of Defense assumes that the decision will not cause any inconvenience to air passengers.
At Kabul airport, seven Afghan civilians were killed at the peril of a crowd. That’s what the British Army reports. Since the Taliban took over, chaos has reigned in and around the airport, where many people are doing everything they can to flee the country.
Several fatalities and injuries were reported at the scene last week. The Taliban reported at least 12 deaths. On Saturday, a 2-year-old girl died when she and her family were run over by a crowd just outside the airport, the New York Times reported.
Whether the victims reported on Sunday were overrun, or were oppressed, is not clear.
The crowd is largely located outside the area where foreign soldiers, mainly American, are active to facilitate the evacuations. The crowd seems to be growing with the approaching deadline the US government has set for completing the operation, August 31. Desperate Afghans see it as their last chance to get away.