The Italian Air Force C-130J aircraft came under fire while taking off from Kabul’s international airport named after Hamid Karzai. It is reported by the Italian agency AGI.
According to the latest reports, the fire is believed to have come from a large-caliber machine gun from an elevated position outside the airport. It is specified that there were no casualties and the bullets barely touched the trim of the plane. There were journalists and 98 Afghan civilians on the plane.
The agency notes that the plane was flown by a woman, an Italian Air Force officer. She kept her composure and made an evasive maneuver to save the plane with passengers. The evacuation plane later landed on the landing strip at Al-Salem airbase in Kuwait. AGI stressed that this was the first attack on an aircraft since NATO forces began evacuating it.
Earlier it became known that militants of the “Islamic State” were preparing an attack at the airport of Kabul. The UK and the USA also reported that an attack by terrorists could take place in the next few hours.
