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Baby Who Was Handed Over Barbed Wire in Viral Photo Now Living in U.S. with Parents: 'A Fighter,' Dad Says

Afghan baby handed to Marine over fence
Afghan baby handed to Marine over fence

Courtesy Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Baby at Kabul airport

The Afghan baby pictured being passed to U.S. troops over a wall outside the Kabul airport in August is now safe with her family in the Phoenix area, CBS News reports.

The 8-week-old girl, named Liya, was 16 days old when she was handed to a Marine from among a crowd gathered at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul during the evacuations at the end of the war.

According to CBS News, Liya was eventually reunited with her father, Hameed, a linguist and cultural adviser, and his wife, her mother, and the three evacuated the country.

Speaking to CBS News, Hameed said he had been working in the airport and saw his daughter and wife needed assistance outside the wall, so he asked a Marine to get his baby. (His wife was able to enter the airport hours later.) Hameed said he held Liya only briefly before handing her to a different Marine in order to go get his wife — whom, he said, had been robbed by the Taliban at a checkpoint near the airport — to safety.

He believed that Liya would be okay with a member of the U.S. military, he said.

"That day, I handed over my baby to a total stranger. The only thing I trusted is that he was a Marine and that my daughter would be fine," Hameed told CBS.

The striking moment — of a lone baby being lifted up over barbed wire — quickly spread around social media and was seen by millions. It came amid turmoil for many Afghans after the Taliban seized control of the capital and other cities in August as the U.S. military was withdrawing from the country.

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

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to request for comment on the baby girl's resettlement, but a Pentagon spokesperson previously shared some details of her condition.

John Kirby said in a August press briefing that the child had been returned to her father after being passed over the fencing and treated for an illness at a Norwegian hospital at the airport.

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

Her dad agrees, telling CBS News his daughter is "a fighter" who "made it through the worst of times at the beginning of her life." Hameed suggested he might make her military connection a more permanent part of her identity.

"So I'm thinking to put Marine as her middle name," he told CBS.

The incident is making headlines for another reason as well.

A Marine recently claimed to be the one who was handed Hameed's daughter and appeared at a rally hosted by former President Donald Trump. But the military says it wasn't him.

While Lance Cpl. Hunter Clark introduced himself at the Trump rally in Georgia last weekend as "the guy that pulled the baby over the wall," according to CNN, the Marine Corps told the network that it wasn't Clark in the photo.

The Marines' statement added that Clark was now under investigation regarding whether his appearance at the rally violated any Pentagon policies, which generally prohibit active duty service-members from speaking at partisan events.

Clark's mother told CNN he could not talk to the media.