U.S. Army Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division was the last American service member to leave Afghanistan on Monday, U.S. Central Command said.
An image made through a night vision lens, released by CENTCOM, showed Donahue boarding a C-17 cargo plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. He was the last U.S. troop on the ground in Afghanistan.
“On the last plane out was General Chris Donahue, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division and my ground commander, and he was accompanied by our — our charge d’affaires, Ambassador Ross Wilson, so they came out together,” CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said at a Pentagon briefing. “So the state and defense team came out on the last aircraft and were in fact the last people to step on the ground.”
The last planes took off from the airport on Monday at 3:29 p.m. Eastern Time or one minute before midnight in Kabul. That's a day ahead of the deadline to leave the country.
McKenzie said a number of American citizens, likely numbering in “the very low hundreds,” were left behind, and that he believes they will still be able to leave the country.
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