3 Dead in Afghanistan After Taliban Crashes US Black Hawk Helicopter Left Behind During Withdrawal

A Black Hawk helicopter flies over Kabul in Afghanistan in this undated file photo. (Dan Kitwood/AP Photo)

Three people have died in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul after the Taliban crashed a Black Hawk helicopter left behind by U.S. troops who withdrew from the country in 2021.

The Taliban’s defense ministry confirmed the crash, which happened during a Taliban training exercise, in a statement on Sept. 10.

“An American Black Hawk helicopter, which was flown ... for training, crashed due to a technical problem inside the campus of the National Defence [sic] University,” said Ministry of Defense spokesperson Enaytullah Khowrazmi. The spokesperson also confirmed that five people were injured during the crash.

Video footage of the incident was also shared online by Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary and shows the helicopter swirling around in the air above the campus before appearing to lose control and plummeting to the ground as people look on.

Sarwary said that the Taliban had ordered U.S. trained pilots who remained in Afghanistan after the withdrawal to train new recruits in a pilot-training scheme.

“They have since lost several helicopters‌ in training flights. Each of these helicopters costs $30–35 millions [sic] and takes manufacturers years to deliver,” Sarwary wrote on Twitter.

The Taliban took command of some U.S.-made aircraft after they took control of the country when American troops withdrew in August 2021, although it is unclear how many of the aircraft are operational.

U.S forces damaged some military equipment as they left the country to prevent Taliban soldiers from taking control of them, while Afghan forces flew some helicopters to central Asian nations.

However, video footage and photos soon emerged of Taliban members holding American weaponry such as M4 carbines and M16 rifles as opposed to AK-47s or AKMs, surrounding Black Hawk helicopters.

‘Poorly Planned and Executed’

President Joe Biden has faced criticism over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which also saw 13 U.S. service members killed during a suicide bombing attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul as they helped to screen people who were racing to leave the country.

The ISIS terrorist group later claimed responsibility for the attack, which also killed more than 160 Afghans. The service members were later posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

At the time of the withdrawal, top Republican lawmakers demanded to know how the U.S. Department of Defense planned to prevent the billions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons from falling into the hands of the Taliban.

“As a direct result of the Biden Administration’s poorly planned and executed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban is now armed with a significant arsenal of U.S.-made weaponry. Worse, it would appear the Biden Administration has no clue what or how many weapon platforms are now owned and operated by the Taliban,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the committee, and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), the ranking member on the National Security subcommittee, wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The lawmakers went on to raise concerns over whether the Taliban would use the U.S. weapons left behind in the country to attack America or its allies or sell such weapons to foreign adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.

They also cited concerns over the Taliban’s seizure of biometric devices that they said could aid the extremist group in “their attempts to identify and, eventually, persecute Afghans that assisted in the U.S. mission,” noting that such equipment contains “data such as iris scans, fingerprints, and biographical information” and that “it is likely this information will be used to attack U.S. allies.”

The White House has previously admitted that a “fair amount” of U.S. defense materials had fallen into the Taliban’s hands, with Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan telling reporters at a press conference in 2021 that it was highly unlikely that the Taliban would “readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Defense for comment.

Masooma Haq and Reuters contributed to this report.