British embassy staff left Taliban Afghan ‘hit list’ of workers who helped western forces in race to evacuate

BRITISH embassy staff left a "hit list" of Afghan workers who helped western forces in their abandoned compound in Kabul as they fled the Taliban.

Contact details for workers and CVs were seen scattered around the embassy in the Afghan capital by a journalist from during a tour of the city's deserted diplomatic quarter, accompanied by a Taliban patrol.

War correspondent Anthony Loyd said as he looked around the building, he saw documents British diplomats had left behind, with the personal information - including names, addresses and phone numbers - of some of the embassy's Afghan employees on the papers.

Job applications also containing sensitive data were also spotted amongst the rubble in plain sight during the visit on Tuesday.

As he was being escorted by Taliban fighters, Loyd was unable to remove the documents himself, but The Times made calls to the numbers from the papers - revealing some Afghan staff and their families remain stranded in Kabul.

Some personnel and applicants were still waiting to be evacuated, while others were stuck outside the airport perimeter.

Others had been able to evacuate or managed to flee the war-torn country on their own.

Among those left behind were three Afghan workers and eight family members, including five children, who were stranded among crowds unable to reach the British-held sector of the airport, the outlet reported.

Loyd handed over details of missing staff to senior Foreign Office officials stationed at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai international airport - with arrangements then made for their evacuation.

But the fate of at least two job applicants for the positions as interpreters remains unknown.

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It has raised questions as to whether protocols on destroying sensitive information were followed, with Loyd writing: "It suggests that staff at the British embassy were careless with the lives of Afghan employees in the rush to save their own."

But the Foreign Office has insisted measures were taken to ensure personal details on documents did not fall into the hands of the Taliban.

“We have worked tirelessly to secure the safety of those who worked for us including getting three families to safety," a spokesperson told the Sun Online.

“During the drawdown of our Embassy every effort was made to destroy sensitive material.” 

A Foreign Office source added: "We are grateful to The Times for sharing the information retrieved with us and working with us to enable us to get these three families to safety."

It comes after Joe Biden appeared to admit that the US may have handed Taliban henchmen a “kill list” to target Afghans who previously helped Americans in the country.

Evacuation efforts are being ramped up as the president’s self-imposed deadline to withdraw all American troops by August 31 inches closer.