5 evacuees planned to hijack US commercial flight during Kabul evacuation, says USAF

The United States Air Force (USAF) revealed on Wednesday, 13 October that airmen successfully prevented a planned hijacking of the commercial airliner by five evacuees from Afghanistan. In a bulletin about the US evacuation mission from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the US Air Force article revealed how the airmen carried out Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) from the war-torn country since July, before the former Afghan government fell to the insurgents.

The deploying Airmen, led by Lt. Col. Brian Desautels revealed that on one occasion, the airmen received an ‘intel tip’ regarding five people on board a commercial airliner with a plan to hijack the flight. He said, "Our team worked to get them clear of the NATO ramp, relocated to the north side away from friendly forces, then ultimately onto the south side where the situation was handled.”

Meanwhile, USAF Col. Russell Cook, commander of the 23rd Wing, told a group of airmen at a mission briefing on 23 July that, “The hair on the back of your necks should be standing up; this is not the Afghanistan we all knew...I knew this was going to be different - all of the assumptions and experiences from the past in Afghanistan were invalid.”

Cook added in the article, "I spoke with the leadership before they left and made sure they understood that. By the time they walked out the door, I was 100% confident that the team was ready to execute their critical life-saving mission in the most challenging of environments."

US lawmakers 'walked out' of Biden admin's briefing on Afghan

The US Air Force briefing on Afghan evacuation came just weeks after CNN reported citing its sources that multiple Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the United States furiously walked out of a classified briefing with members of the US President Joe Biden-led administration on Afghanistan. The US lawmakers were reportedly left frustrated after US State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland security and Office of the Director of National Security officials remained unsuccessful in answering their basic questions during the briefing for the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on September 22 (local time). 

Reportedly, the officials of the US State Department had said privately and publicly that around 100 Americans are still in Afghanistan and are wishing to get out, a month after the Taliban seized control of the country. Some lawmakers even told CNN that they did not understand that accounting considering that the department has said they evacuated over 75 Americans from the South Asian country through its evacuation mission in the last few weeks. 

IMAGE: AP