The Afghan Sports Federation announced the killing of an Afghan football player in an American plane

A sports association said today, that an Afghan football player who played for the national youth team fell to his death after trying to cling to a US plane carrying people from the Afghan capital, Kabul, which is controlled by the Taliban.

The Afghan Directorate General of Physical Education and Sports, a government institution that works with sports groups, confirmed the death of Zaki Anwari in the chaos that erupted at the capital’s airport this week.

«Anwari, like thousands of young Afghans, wanted to leave the country but fell from an American plane and died,» the group said in a statement posted on Facebook.

Thousands of Afghans flocked to the airport this week in an attempt to flee the country in the wake of a thunderbolt attack by the Taliban that ended with them taking power after President Ashraf Ghani fled.

In a shocking video from the airport, on Monday, hundreds of people were seen running alongside a US Air Force plane as it accelerated down the runway – and several men stuck beside it in desperation.

Other clips surfaced on social media showing two people falling to their deaths from a C-17 after takeoff.

The US military confirmed that human remains were later found in a wheel well, adding that it was investigating the reported deaths linked to the C-17.

«Before the aircrew could drop the payload, hundreds of Afghan civilians surrounded the plane,» said US Air Force spokeswoman Anne Stefanik.

«Faced with the rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to leave the airport as soon as possible.»

US President Joe Biden has come under pressure at home and abroad to explain how his administration was apparently unprepared for a quick Taliban attack – and the way US forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan.

Memories of the brutal Taliban regime of the 1990s – which saw music and television banned, people stoned to death, and women locked in their homes – caused panic over what awaited them, leading many Afghans to try to flee.