A US military plane, with a capacity of 100, with 640 passengers on board, took off during the chaos at Kabul Airport

KABUL – With hundreds of people desperately trying to flee Afghanistan in dramatic scenes At Kabul International AirportHours after the Taliban seized control of the government, a US military plane safely carried 640 people on board – the plane’s “official” capacity is about 100 passengers.

According to reports published in American newspapers, the C-17 Globemaster III aircraft operated by the US Air Force was about to take off towards Al Udeid base in Qatar with some passengers selected by the Americans on Sunday night.

However, the plane was invaded, and hundreds of people gathered on the ground. According to Defense One, citing Defense Ministry sources, the crew “made the decision to leave” and about 640 people disembarked safely at the final destination. Initially, there was talk of up to 800 passengers.

The Pentagon did not comment on the operation, nor did it say whether another plane took off with so many passengers – in 2013, another C-17 carried 670 people who had escaped a typhoon in the Philippines, which also made the flight safe.

To this day, the “record” of passengers in the rescue plane belongs to the Israeli company “El Al”, which in 1991 transported 1,088 people on a Boeing 747-200 during Operation Solomon, which transported thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.