so we just managed to get into the airport compound. and have to say, it was it was pretty intense. it was just, like, this crush of desperate people and screaming and children and women and babies. and um yeah. it s not often you really see desperation like that. the few people that do make it are exhausted and scared. but they re the lucky ones. they ve made it past the taliban checkpoints, afghan security guards and, finally, the airport gate. but they can t forget those who they left behind. we re getting out. we re happy for that but we re heartbroken for our country. especially, for those who can t get out. those who are stuck here. we re really heartbroken. our heart bleeds for them. what do you feel for all all the mothers with young daughters who will now be growing up under taliban rule?
cnn s team and root from kabul to qatar with a crowd of some 400 afghan nationals desperate to flee afghanistan. but, the journey began at the airport in kabul where as david was mentioning, clarissa ward filed this report. reporter: after three weeks in afghanistan, we joined the crowds at kabul airport, now the only way out of the country. there is a huge block here. lots of cars. hundreds of people wait in the blistering heat hoping for a flight out. so we just managed to get into the airport compound and i have to say, it was pretty intense. just like this crush of desperate people and screaming children and women and babies and, yeah, it s not every day you see desperation like that.
the airport compound and i have to say, it was pretty intense. just like this crush of desperate people and screaming children and women and babies and, yeah, it s not every day you see desperation like that. reporter: the few people that do make it are exhausted and scared but they re the lucky ones. they made it past the taliban check points afghan security guards and finally, the airport gate. but they can t forget those who they left behind. we re getting out. we re happy for that but we re heart broken for our country, especially those who can t get out and are stuck here, we re really heart broken. our heart bleeds for them. reporter: what do you feel for the young mothers with young daughters who will be growing up under taliban rule?
airport compound. it s just a picture of desperation of failure as well. failure to protect our allies. failure to plan for this eventuality. and i think everybody here understands that no one could have predicted how quickly things would unravel. but still, there s a lot of heart ache and bitterness that every eventuality wasn t planned for. that evacuations didn t begin earlier. so now is not time for finger pointing and the blame game. it s always easy to do monday morning quarterbacking, but certainly seeing these scenes, seeing this heart ache, seeing this desperation and seeing this chaos, you have to ask yourself, surely there was a better way.
resumed in kabul after being paused for around eight hours today. that s because the biden administration was scrambling to try to find other countries willing to accept afghan evacuees after backlogs at processing sites in qatar. outside the kabul airport cnn crews report some afghans have been waiting literally for days to get through the gates with mothers and children particularly struggling in the 95-degree heat and in the crush of the crowd the desperation apparent. a crowd of afghans lifting a baby over the airport perimeter to u.s. marines. the u.s. confirmed this afternoon that the baby was taken to a medical treatment facility inside the airport compound and later reunited with its father. a source telling me at least seven small children have had medical emergencies outside the airport in the last few days. and despite president biden not knowing of any issues of americans getting into the