SPACE CRUNCH STOPS GHANI FROM TAKING ALL CASH IN COPTER

Moscow, Aug. 16: Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has fled the war-torn country aboard a helicopter stuffed with money but had to leave some cash as it could not be squeezed into the chopper, according to Russian official media reports on Monday.

Taliban insurgents swept Kabul on Sunday after a sudden and unprecedented collapse of the US-backed Ghani government, prompting the president to join fellow citizens and foreigners to leave the country. Quoting Russian embassy in Kabul, Russian official news agency

TASS reported that the 72year-old President fled Afghanistan aboard a helicopter packed with money.

“As for the reasons for the collapse of the regime, they are characterised by how Ghani fled the country. Four cars were packed with money, and they tried to cram another bag of cash into the helicopter. Not all the cash managed to squeeze in, and some of the money was left lying on the airfield,” a mission employee was quoted as saying by the report.

Though TASS did not name the mission employee, quoting Russian diplomatic mission spokesperson Nikita Ishenko, Russian wire service Sputnik reported that Ghani was escorted with cars filled with cash as he was fleeing Kabul.

“They tried to put part of the money into a helicopter, but everything did not fit. And some of the money was left on the runway,” Ishenko said.

In his first comments after he left Afghanistan, Ghani in a Facebook post on Sunday said he was faced with a “hard choice” between the “armed Taliban” who wanted to enter the Presidential Palace or “leaving the dear country that I dedicated my life to protecting the past 20 years”. “If there were still countless countrymen martyred and they would face the destruction and destruction of Kabul city, the result would have been a big human disaster in this six million city.”