How awful.
The young man whose body was found in the landing gear of the US C0-17A leaving the Kabul airport has been identified.
Zaki Aanvari (Zaki Anwari) was a member of the Afghanistan Youth Soccer Team. He tried to flee the Taliban. His body parts were found in the landing gear.
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Very sad to hear that one of the youths who tried to leave #Kabul through grabbing the landing gear bay of a #USAF‘s C-17A transport airplane few days ago was a player of #Afghanistan‘s National youth soccer team, Zaki Anvari. His body parts was found in the landing gear bay. pic.twitter.com/tsiSuiZTLs
— Babak Taghvaee – Μπάπακ Τακβαίε – بابک تقوایی (@BabakTaghvaee) August 18, 2021
He was just a boy.
One of the youths who tried to leave #Kabul through grabbing the landing gear bay of a #USAF‘s C-17A transport airplane few days ago was a player of #Afghanistan‘s National youth soccer team, Zaki Anvari. His body parts was found in the landing gear bay. pic.twitter.com/4BdZs0g8YZ
— Gustakhi (@Gustakhi1) August 18, 2021
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Forbes later reported on Zaki Aanvari’s tragic attempt to escape the Taliban.
A member of Afghanistan’s national youth soccer team was among the people who were killed as they tried desperately to cling to a U.S. military plane evacuating people from Kabul, the country’s official sports federation said Thursday.
His name was Zaki Anwari, and he was 17.
On Monday, a crowd of Afghans surged onto the tarmac of the international airport in the frantic scramble to escape a country newly overrun by the Taliban. In a scene that shocked the world, and in just one wrenching moment encapsulated the chaos of America’s exit from Afghanistan, some of them chased aircraft carrying Americans and tried to climb onto their sides, wings and wheels.
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The young soccer player was among them, the federation said.
“Anwari was one of hundreds of young people who wanted to leave the country and, in an incident, fell off an American military plane and died,” the group said in a statement on Facebook.
The sports community of Afghanistan was in grief, the statement said. It wished Zaki a place in heaven and offered a prayer that God grant his family, friends and teammates peace and patience as they mourn.
The federation posted photos of Zaki wearing his team’s red jersey — he was No. 10 — and standing on a soccer field. Another photo showed him in a suit and tie. Beside them were photos of an airborne U.S. military plane with what appeared to be a falling body and a single red rose.
