A 9-month-old girl aboard an Afghanistan evacuation flight died soon after the plane landed in Philadelphia on Wednesday night, according to city police.
The infant was unresponsive when the flight arrived at 9:16 p.m., and medics transported her to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was pronounced dead at 10:10.
City police were summoned to the hospital, where they were met by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who said the child had suffered a medical emergency on a flight arriving at Philadelphia International Airport.
The girl and her family were coming from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, to where they had been evacuated from Afghanistan, a Defense Department spokesperson, Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell, told ABC News.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the parents and family,” he told the network.
It’s the first known death of an evacuee during the airlift that saw about 124,000 people flown out of Kabul.
The child’s death is under investigation by police and by the city Medical Examiner’s Office. Since Saturday, 3,654 people have arrived in Philadelphia on evacuation flights.
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