American soldiers deployed at the Kabul airport have been shot at and were forced to return fire, killing two, said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Monday.
Two “armed individuals” were shot and killed in separate incidents at the airport, said Kirby to reporters, coming as thousands of people crowd around the facility to try and flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country and declared victory on Sunday. About 2,500 troops are currently at the airport, Kirby said.
Images and videos uploaded online showed Afghan citizens attempting to cling to U.S. military planes that were performing evacuations. At least two fell hundreds of feet from the military planes to their deaths, the footage showed.
There were unconfirmed reports citing U.S. military officials that said at least seven people died amid the Kabul airport chaos.
As of Monday, American forces were working with Turkish and other international troops to clear the Kabul airport to allow international evacuation flights to continue, said Kirby to reporters. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, he added, authorized the deployment of another battalion to the airport.
The Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, bringing an end to a two-decade campaign in which the U.S. and its allies had tried to transform Afghanistan.
The country’s Western-trained security forces collapsed or fled, ahead of the planned withdrawal of the last American troops at the end of the month.
Residents raced to Kabul’s international airport, where the “civilian side” was closed until further notice, according to Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority. The U.S. military and other Western forces continued to organize evacuations.
Shafi Arifi, who had a ticket to travel to Uzbekistan on Sunday, was unable to board his plane because it was packed with people who had raced across the tarmac and climbed aboard, with no police or airport staff in sight.
“There was no room for us to stand,” he told The Associated Press. “Children were crying, women were shouting, young and old men were so angry and upset, no one could hear each other. There was no oxygen to breathe.”
The White House said Monday that President Joe Biden will deliver an address on the security situation in the country.