Afghan Baby Reunited with Father After Viral Video of Family Passing Them to U.S. Troops Over Fence

Courtesy Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty

The Department of Defense has explained the circumstances around a recent viral video of a baby being passed to U.S. troops over the fence at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The child has since been returned to their father, after they were treated for an illness at a Norwegian hospital at the airport, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said Friday in a press briefing. The family handed the infant over to receive medical attention, and they are now "safe at the airport" behind the U.S. military's perimeter, Marine Corps spokesperson Jim Stenger told Forbes.

"Obviously, we have a responsibility to return a child to the child's parent," Kirby said, adding: "I think this was a very humane act of compassion by the Marines."

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The update comes after Omar Haidari first shared the video on Thursday, which has since amassed more than 2.7 million views. "The chaos & fear of people is a testament to the international community's role in AFG's downfall & their subsequent abandonment of Afghan people," Haidari wrote. "The future for AFG has [been] decided for its people without its people's vote & now they live at the mercy of a terrorist group."

Officials have since warned against passing children over the fence, which is topped with barbed wire. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News that the U.K. government "cannot just take a minor on their own."

"You will find as you see in the footage I think you're showing now, the child was taken — that will be because the family will be taken as well," Wallace added, referring to other videos that have surfaced.

Other soldiers have shared their accounts of families trying to hand over their children to get them to safety. "The mothers were desperate, they were getting beaten by the Taliban," a parachute regiment officer told The Sun. "They shouted 'save my baby' and threw the babies at us, some of the babies fell on the barbed wire. It was awful what happened. By the end of the night there wasn't one man among us who was not crying."

The scene unfolded amid turmoil for many Afghans after the Taliban seized control of Kabul and other cities this month, following the planned withdrawal of U.S. military troops from the country.

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Afghans subsequently descended into panic, crowding the airport in Kabul and scaling concrete walls around the tarmac in an attempt to board international flights and flee the Taliban's control. In some instances, more than 600 people have evacuated in a single trip on Air Force cargo planes, more than the amount of passengers those types of aircrafts typically hold. Many have rushed half-open ramps and even wheel wells to escape, and some have fallen to their death in the process.

An Afghan man living in Kabul (who asked to be kept anonymous for fear of reprisal) told PEOPLE of the sense of terror that has taken over the city, threatening his family's livelihood. "We are afraid to go outside now. Everyone is scared and hiding. Unless you are with the Taliban, it is not safe inside Afghanistan," the man said.

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"I myself, and people in my family, we worked with the Afghan government. We were government workers. Now we are unemployed. I have no income. I have to live off of what money I already have," he continued. "Our family wants to go to America. We thought we had more time."

After announcing that all U.S. troops would withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, Biden told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos last Wednesday that the U.S. will "do everything in our power to get all Americans out and our allies out," confirming that troops will remain in Afghanistan as long as necessary.