It’s an image that made people gasp, a baby picked up by a Marine and whisked over a barbed-wire fence (watch above). The New York Times writes:

Outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, a frenzied crowd of Afghans gathered on the Taliban-controlled side of a concrete wall topped with razor wire to beg a group of Marines to give them access to freedom.

Suddenly, the mass of outstretched hands produced a baby, no more than a few months old, and held the child up for the soldiers to see. As if handling a piece of luggage, a Marine plucked the infant by a single arm, passing the child behind him before turning back to the crowd.

There were fears that a parent was turning their child over to try to get it out of the country alone, but today we are learning this wasn’t a case of child separation. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby explains:

“The parent asked the Marines to look after the baby because the baby was ill and so the Marine you see reaching over the wall took it to a Norwegian hospital that’s at the airport.” 

Kirby says isn’t sure where the family is now but knows that they have been reunited, “They treated the child and returned the child to the child’s father… it was an act of compassion.”