A nine-month-old girl from Afghanistan aboard an evacuation flight died soon after the aircraft landed in Philadelphia Wednesday night, police said.
The infant arrived with her family from Ramstein Air Base in Germany after they were airlifted from Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Department representative Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell disclosed.
The girl was a passenger on a C-17 Globemaster en route to Philadelphia International Airport when she became non-responsive, Mitchell said. The infant was among the second wave of evacuees from Afghanistan.
Emergency medical crews and an interpreter met the plane when it landed, and the baby and her father were transported to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where doctors pronounced her dead moments after.
"Our thoughts and prayers to the parents and family," Mitchell said.
It is the first known death of a civilian evacuee on U.S. soil during the withdrawal that saw around 124,000 people flown out of Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul.
The Philadelphia airport has processed around 3,653 refugees from Afghanistan who have arrived between August 28 and September 1, data provided by the city's local authorities show.
It is one of two airports involved in the evacuation effort, along with the Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
As of Wednesday, the U.S. had accommodated almost 24,000 at-risk Afghan nationals it flew out from Kabul this summer, data released by the Department of Homeland Security show.
More than 36,000 additional refugees remained at military installations in Europe and the Middle East awaiting processing and security screenings, as of Thursday.
Some evacuees without visas have been temporarily allowed entry into the U.S. on emergency humanitarian basis, rather than under the traditional evacuation program.
U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were around 43,000 refugees in nine countries in the Middle East and Europe, and around 20,000 Afghans at eight military facilities in the U.S.
Meanwhile, authorities did not elaborate on the nature of the girl's medical emergency. A cause of death has not been disclosed.
Both the Medical Examiner's Office (MEO) and the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) are investigating the incident.
