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A day after Taliban’s take-over of Afghanistan, horrific visuals emerged from Kabul on Monday, 16 August, as swarms of people attempted to escape the country in a terrified rush. These visuals included videos of people falling to their deaths many feet below after they clung to a plane as it took off.
Meanwhile, on Monday afternoon, Wali Salek and his family In Khair Khana, a neighbourhood in north west of Kabul, were startled as they heard a loud thud on top of their house.
Salek was quoted by Scroll as saying that that it “sounded like a bomb blast” and his neighbours too heard it and rushed out of their homes.
When Salek and his wife went to the roof to see what happened, his wife fainted.
Trigger Warning: disturbing visuals
Lying before them were two brutally disfigured bodies. His neighbours informed him that the two men had fallen off a plane that had taken off from the Hamid Karzai International Airport — only 8 km away from his home.
The duo were subsequently identified as Shafiullah Hotak, aged between 25 and 27 years and Fida Mohammad, who must be only about 20.
Sharing his shock with Scroll, Salek said, “I thought maybe the plane would drop some dollars but never bodies.”
After dropping the bodies off at a nearby mosque, Salek is reported to have gone home and washed the remnants of flesh off his body.
The United States, meanwhile, was quoted by NDTV as saying that human remains were found in the plane's wheel well after it landed in Qatar.
Taliban seized control of Afghanistan on Sunday, with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the war-torn country.
(With inputs from Scroll and NDTV)
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