Ten Kenyans stranded in Afghanistan after Taliban takeover

Ten Kenyans are among thousands of people from other nationalities stranded in Afghanistan after Taliban fighters took control of the government and tossed the country into a state of unrest.

The said Kenyans are reported to have been employed by international agencies and technological firms, some of which have since evacuated their citizens.

Kenyans have taken to Twitter to urge the government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to airlift their stranded fellow citizens back home.

The ministry is however yet to issue a statement on the matter.

This even as military flights evacuating diplomats and civilians from Afghanistan resumed early on Tuesday after the runway at Kabul airport was cleared of thousands of people desperate to flee after the Taliban seized the capital.

The number of civilians at the airport had thinned out, a Western security official at the facility told Reuters, a day after chaotic scenes in which U.S. troops fired to disperse crowds and people clung to a U.S. military transport plane as it taxied for take-off.

U.S. forces took charge of the airport, their only way to fly out of the country, on Sunday, as the militants were winding up a dramatic week of advances across the country with their takeover of the capital without a fight.

Flights were suspended flights for much of Monday, when at least five people were killed, witnesses said, although it was unclear whether they had been shot or crushed in a stampede.

Media reported two people fell to their deaths from the underside of a U.S. military aircraft after it took off, crashing to their deaths on roofs of homes near the airport.

A U.S. official told Reuters U.S. troops had killed two gunmen who had appeared to have fired into the crowd at the airport.

Despite the scenes of panic and confusion in Kabul, U.S. President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw U.S. forces after 20 years of war – the nation’s longest – that he described as costing more than $1 trillion.