NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
- An Afghan interpreter who helped rescue Joe Biden in 2008 in Afghanistan has now escaped.
- Biden's helicopter was forced to land during a snowstorm, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- Aman Khalili was part of the team that rescued Biden and two other senators.
An Afghan interpreter who helped to rescue Joe Biden in 2008 during an emergency in Afghanistan has now escaped the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
"After 144 hours of driving day and night and getting through so many checkpoints my family was so scared, but right now this is a kind of heaven," Aman Khalili told the Journal.
"Hell was in Afghanistan," he added.
Khalili was part of a team that helped to rescue then-Senator Biden, along with Sens. John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, after their helicopter convoy was forced by a snowstorm to land in a valley vulnerable to Taliban attacks, the report said.
After Khalili's assistance in the operation was made public in a Wall Street Journal report on August 31, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said to reporters that the US would get him out of Afghanistan.
Following weeks of setbacks, a group of US veterans working with former Afghan soldiers and Pakistani allies were able to successfully drive Khalili and his family over 600 miles across the border into Pakistan, the report said.
"Aman helped keep me and other Americans safe while we were fighting in Afghanistan, and we wanted to return the favor," Brian Genthe, a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who worked with Khalili, told the Journal.
Khalili was hired as a translator for the US shortly after the 2001 invasion that toppled the old Taliban regime, the report said.
Meanwhile, civilian groups have been evacuating US citizens and visa holders from Afghanistan, Insider previously reported.
The US has evacuated more than 122,000 people from Afghanistan since August 14, the day before the Taliban seized control of Kabul, according to a Sky News tracker.
It is not clear how many have been evacuated since the August 31 military withdrawal deadline.