Chaos continues at Kabul airport as time runs out to escape Taliban
Special forces troops have mounted rescue missions in Kabul to try and make sure UK citizens can make it to the airport and out of Afghanistan.
Thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals have fled to the airport in recent days to escape the country after it fell back into the hands of the Taliban.
Scenes there have been chaotic, with footage showing women and children being trampled and stun grenades being thrown to try and disperse the throngs mobbing the entrances.
Harrowing clips also showed desperate Afghans passing their children up over the crowds and barbed wire fences and into the hands of Allied troops.
The UK Government has announced plans to resettle 20,000 vulnerable Afghans – particularly women and girls – with 5,000 arriving in the first 12 months.
The US has pledged to evacuate at least 22,000 people, including American citizens and those holding visas.
While flights have been taking off, it has been extremely difficult for many to reach the airport due to the sea of people ahead of them in the queues.
On top of that, bands of gun-toting Taliban fighters manning checkpoints along the way have been checking paperwork and sending people without the proper documents home.
Among those trying to flee are activists, women, former officials, journalists, ex-soldiers and members of now-defunct intelligence agencies who believe they have reason to fear for their safety, despite Taliban assurances that they do not seek revenge and will give women rights.
Social media feeds have begun featuring grainy mobile phone footage of armed men searching houses or beating people in the street.
They have added to the climate of fear among people trapped in homes looking for information online.
Among the worst reports was that of a woman killed by Taliban fighters for not wearing the correct clothing in public.
Another featured an alleged car thief being tarred and strapped to the back of a truck.
Mohammed Naim, who said he used to work as an interpreter for US forces, has been in the crowd at the airport for the past four days trying to escape.
He said he put his children up on the roof of a car to prevent them being crushed by the mass of people of the first day.
Urging others not to make the perilous journey, he added: ‘It is a very, very crazy situation right now.’
The Taliban denied claims they were preventing people leaving the country, with a spokesman saying the group is ‘only pushing (away) those who have no legal papers to travel, but who are adding to the chaos at Kabul airport gate’.
Defence minister James Heappey said he hopes the Taliban will be ‘different this time’.
He said a total of 963 people have been evacuated from Kabul on the RAF ‘air bridge’ in the last 24 hours.
But the former soldier, who fought in Afghanistan, added that he is kept ‘awake at night’ by the knowledge the UK will not be able to get ‘absolutely everybody out’.
Small teams of SAS troops have been deployed outside the perimeter to locate individuals struggling to make RAF flights, sources told The Times.
Mr Heappey told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘It keeps me awake at night, it keeps the Secretary of State (Ben Wallace) awake at night, it keeps absolutely everyone here at the Ministry of Defence awake at night – that reality that we won’t get absolutely everybody out.
‘But what is in our gift is that, through the extraordinary professionalism of our armed forces, we can get as many people out as possible.’
Boris Johnson has said the evacuation effort is making ‘some good progress’ and the situation at Kabul airport is ‘getting slightly better’.
He added: ‘Yesterday we were able to get out about a thousand people, today another thousand people, and a lot of those are obviously UK-eligible persons coming back to this country, and a lot of them are people coming back under the Afghanistan resettlement and assistance programme.’
Speaking to reporters in Downing Street after chairing a Cobra meeting, Mr Johnson said ‘we will continue to work as fast as we can over the next few days’ to evacuate people.
The PM also insisted he has full confidence in Dominic Raab after the Foreign Secretary was criticised for his handling of the Afghanistan crisis.
Reports said that Foreign Office officials advised Mr Raab on August 13 to call Afghan foreign minister Hanif Atmar – two days before the Taliban marched on Kabul – to arrange help for those who had supported British troops.
But Mr Raab delegated this to department minister Lord Goldsmith, and it later emerged the call was never made.
Mr Johnson said he did not think the decision of his Cabinet minister had delayed the rescue of Afghan interpreters from the Taliban.
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