Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

AFGHAN WOMAN gives birth after evacuation landing.

- ADELA SULIMAN

An Afghan woman gave birth just moments after landing on an evacuation flight, the U.S. Air Mobility Command said early Sunday.

The unidentifi­ed woman delivered a baby girl in the cargo bay of a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft, shortly after landing Sunday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

“The mother went into labor and began having complicati­ons. The aircraft commander decided to descend in altitude to increase air pressure in the aircraft, which helped stabilize and save the mother’s life,” Air Mobility Command reported.

After landing in Germany, she was treated by medics who came aboard and delivered the child in the cargo bay of the aircraft.

The flight was carrying Afghans from an “intermedia­te staging base in the Middle East,” according to Air Mobility Command.

Thousands of people have fled Afghanista­n since the Taliban takeover of the country last week with many passing through the U.S. Al Udeid air base in the gulf country of Qatar. Smaller numbers are now being housed at U.S. bases in nearby Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

The baby girl and mother are in a good condition, according to Air Mobility Command, and have been transporte­d to a nearby medical facility.

News of the dramatic birth was met with joy on social media, with many congratula­ting both the U.S. military and Afghan mother.

“Thank you heroes!! Welcome baby!!” wrote one person on Twitter.

Others praised “the best pilots in the world” and another tweeted, “Now that is going to be a crazy birth certificat­e and story.”

The mother appears to be one of the fortunate ones that made it out of the intermedia­te staging areas in Qatar and elsewhere, which are rapidly being overwhelme­d by the huge numbers of Afghans being evacuated from the country following the swift Taliban takeover.

Since the process began last week, 17,000 people have been flown out of Kabul, including 2,500 Americans — who tend to get processed the quickest and flown on to other destinatio­ns. Those without U.S. passports have been spending days in sweltering rudimentar­y accommodat­ions in Qatar and elsewhere.

The U.S. air base in Ramstein has since become host to a tent city of some 5,000 Afghans who made it out of the country and await their next destinatio­n, according to the U.S. military’s Stars and Stripes daily newspaper. The base currently has capacity for 5,000 evacuees but that could be expanded.

The Pentagon was even forced to slow the pace of Kabul evacuation­s Friday because of overcrowdi­ng at Al Udeid, causing the number of those waiting at the Kabul airport for flights to swell to 10,000.

In a separate incident earlier this week, images of a baby being handed to a U.S. Marine across a barbed wire fence went viral online, as desperate crowds continue to throng outside Kabul’s airport. Pentagon officials said the baby was treated at a medical facility and later returned to its family.

Children have borne the brunt of years of conflict in Afghanista­n, according to UNICEF, with fears over displaceme­nt, disrupted schooling, recruitmen­t to armed groups and trauma from witnessing atrocities. More than half of all children under 5 years of age in the country are also malnourish­ed, the U.N. body said last week.

A number of countries, including Spain, have agreed to host temporary processing centers for Afghans, but there is a widespread reluctance in Europe to accept more refugees after the mass inflows in 2015.

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