The Hamid Karzai Airport in the Afghan capital city of Kabul was the scene of panic, as crowds tried everything they could to get onto jets to escape the country after it fell to the Taliban on Sunday.

A video shared to Twitter showed crowds scaling a jet bridge at the airport, trying to push and force their way onto a plane which was parked on the tarmac.

"This is, perhaps, one of the saddest images I've seen from Afghanistan," BBC South Asia Bureau Chief Nicola Careem wrote.

"A people who are desperate and abandoned. No aid agencies, no UN, no government. Nothing."

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera English published shocking footage of people clinging on to a US Air Force cargo jet, with further videos showing people seemingly falling off the aircraft - to their deaths - as it flew past the runway.

Afghanistan fell to the Taliban on Sunday, soon after US and allied forces had evacuated the country, bringing a 20-year conflict to be considered as ultimately futile.

The BBC have reported that as Afghans tried to flee the country, the US had taken over the military side of the airport to prioritise the evacuation of embassy staff – news which emerged soon after shots reminiscent of the Americans’ evacuation from Vietnam so many years ago were published.

The US government has also pledged to help local staff and their families and other "particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals" escape the country in the coming days, according to a Sunday statement from the Departments of State and Defence.