Afghans desperately seeking to escape the country have been told to leave Kabul airport by the Taliban, after 12 people were killed there since Sunday.
Taliban and NATO officials said the deaths were due to either gunshots or a stampede.
Hundreds are still trying to flee Afghanistan via the capital’s airport, with reports of mothers throwing their babies over barbed wire fences and begging British soldiers to take them away.
But the Taliban have warned people to leave, with an official saying: ‘We don’t want to hurt anyone at the airport.’
Foreign troops are currently evacuating nationals out of Afghanistan, as well as locals who worked with them during the war.
But although the US has secured the airfield, militants control checkpoints to the airport.
Taliban promises of ‘safe passage’ for those wanting to leave have been undermined by reports of women being beaten and whipped.
British soldiers guarding one of the entrances have told how mothers tried to throw their babies over the airport fences in order to escape the clutches of the Taliban.
One told the Independent: ‘The mothers were desperate, they were getting beaten by the Taliban.
‘They shouted, “save my baby” and threw the babies at us.
‘Some of the babies fell on the barbed wire. It was awful what happened.
‘By the end of the night there wasn’t one man among us who was not crying.’
Commenting on the harrowing scenes, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the armed forces cannot take youngsters without their families.
‘We can’t just take a minor on their own,’ he said.
He insisted that the Taliban are cooperating with the British by letting people through to be evacuated.
But he said the real challenge for embassy staff at the airport is ‘crowd issues’ as hundreds battle for safety.
‘It is very, very difficult for those soldiers dealing with some desperate, desperate people,’ he told Sky News.
In terms of numbers, he committed to ‘calling forward nearly 2,000 people’ to board evacuation flights in the coming days.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has committed to keeping US troops on the ground for as long as it takes to get every last American out.
Speaking to ABC News, he said: ‘If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay till we get them all out.’
However, defence officials said they do not have the capacity to deploy forces beyond the perimeter of Kabul airport in order to evacuate more civilians from Afghanistan.
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