Incident on the Termez Road by Richard Reid

Gazeta.uz reported two Afghan servicemen were taken to the local hospital, presumably after bailing out of the plane. Other conflicting reports concerned one Afghan military plane that originally was said to have crashed on August 15 in Uzbekistan's Surhandarya Province, which borders Afghanistan. Janes, an open-source company specializing in military and security intelligence, reported on August 18 that satellite images showed '21 small, fixed-wing aircraft' and 'about 26 helicopters' of the Afghan Air Force were at the Termez airport as of August 16. The office made no attempt to explain how - with so many civilian and military officials having been to the region recently - there were factual errors in the original post. That statement was later removed, the Prosecutor-General's Office said, due to factual errors. The Uzbek prosecutor-general posted a statement on August 17 that said between August 14 and 15, 46 Afghan planes and helicopters (22 planes and 24 helicopters) 'illegally' crossed the border and were forced to land at Termez. There were reportedly 585 Afghan soldiers aboard those aircraft.Īnother 158 civilians and soldiers crossed the Amu Darya River that marks the Afghan-Uzbek border, on August 15. One report said that, on August 14-15, at least 22 military planes and 24 helicopters crossed from Afghanistan into Uzbekistan and that 'they were forced to land at the international airport at Termez.' How many aircraft crossed into Central Asia is unclear and there are significantly different figures being reported.

Uzbekistan faced a similar situation in late June on a smaller scale as dozens of Afghan soldiers and paramilitaries tried to cross the border but were sent back.Īnd in early July, about 1,000 Afghan civilians crossed the border into eastern Tajikistan.īut starting on August 14, when the biggest city in northern Afghanistan, Mazar-e Sharif, fell to the Taliban, the exodus of people from Afghanistan was literally a 'flight' - by plane and helicopter - which seems to have surprised Tajik and Uzbek authorities. By July 6, hundreds more had come - some 2,300 according to the Afghan government - all of whom were reportedly put on planes bound for Kabul.

Incident on the Termez Road by Richard Reid