Around 1,000 Afghans who were eligible to be evacuated to the UK will be left behind amid fears the government is facing its "biggest ever hostage crisis".
Britain’s final evacuation flight from Kabul Airport is due to leave within hours as troops prepare to depart over the weekend ahead of an August 31 deadline.
The UK’s processing centre in the bomb-hit airport shut at 4.30am UK time on Friday after Boris Johnson claimed the “lion’s share” of people had got out.
Yet Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said 800 to 1,100 Afghans who’d helped British forces, and qualified for evacuation under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), “didn’t make it through."
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And MPs say even that is a vast underestimation of the number of other desperate Afghans who weren't on ARAP, but will be left to their fate with ISIS and the Taliban.
Those Afghans could be left to apply for a separate refugee resettlement scheme, which hasn't yet started but aims to bring 5,000 Afghans to the UK by Christmas.
MP Tom Tugendhat, who served in Afghanistan, warned on Sky News that the UK could now be facing "the biggest hostage crisis [it] has ever seen".
He said: "Over 3,000 entitled people were said to be in Afghanistan at the beginning of the process, I don't know how many now, but we'll be asking about that.
"And we'll be looking to see what that means for getting British citizens out, what that means for getting entitled people out and protecting those people who are, quite rightly, literally in fear of their lives now."
And, in a damning appraisal of the situation, he added: "This is what defeat looks like."
MPs in cities with Afghan constituents have been deluged with pleas for help, with one - Lyn Brown in West Ham - warning she still had 492 family members of her constituents trapped in Afghanistan.
In a letter to the Foreign and Home Secretaries, the Labour MP said: “None have, to my knowledge, been helped to live by the government thus far.”
She added: “The degree of fear and concern my constituents are feeling is extreme.
“This group includes senior Afghan government and military officials and their relatives, judges and prosecutors, vulnerable women who don’t have male relatives with them and are therefore in danger just being on the streets.”
One Labour MP branded the government’s communication of the evacuation flights a “total s***show”, with MPs’ staff left to break the news to families that their luck had run out.
The MP said: “We have people threatening to commit suicide and staff sobbing under the pressure.”
Another MP told the Mirror: “It’s really frustrating the amount of information we’re not able to get access to. We just don’t know what to be advising people - we don’t even know when the last flight’s gone.
“It’s really frustrating at the moment just trying to work out what to say to people.”
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The MP said they have more than 70 people asking for help to escape Afghanistan and perhaps 10 had made it out to their knowledge - but it is impossible to keep a track on numbers because the situation is so chaotic.
Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary Luke Pollard tweeted: “My team and I are trying to get 111 people (updated figure) with a connection to #plymouth to safety.
“We have helped 12 people escape in the past week but the vast majority of those in desperate need remain in Kabul.
“My team and I have been working to get clear answers from the MOD and Foreign Office. Advice has been contradictory, missing and confused. Govt had time to prepare and failed to do so.
“I want to pay tribute to our armed forces and so many Govt officials, they're not to blame.
“The Government may be ending the airlift and has chosen to leave thousands behind, but my team and I won’t.”
Alison Thewliss, SNP MP for Glasgow Central, told Politico that of 60 cases her office was dealing with, she knew of only one person who had made it out of the country.
Tory MP Nusrat Ghani told the website her office was now working virtually full-time on assisting Afghans and “responding to correspondence 24/7.”
Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted: ”The military have done an amazing job but [the end of the evacuation] means many - including my interpreter - will not get out.
“I’m not giving up but my anger and shame for those we’ve left behind to be hunted by the Taliban is growing.”
Green MP Caroline Lucas said: “PM claims overwhelming majority of evacuees have been airlifted out of Kabul but, like other MPs, I'm hearing from constituents whose family are still stranded.
“Urgent calls to Foreign & Home offices go unanswered.”
Labour leader Keir Starmer said: “With the withdrawal we face the heart-breaking reality that people have been left behind, including many to whom we owe so much.
“The British Government must take its fair share of the responsibility and has serious questions to answer about how, despite having 18 months to prepare, their failure to plan and inability to influence others has contributed to this tragic political failure.”
Yesterday Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the "overwhelming majority" of eligible people had already been helped to flee the Taliban by the RAF - and British forces would "keep going up until the last moment" to evacuate others.
As of last night the UK had evacuated 13,146 British nationals, Afghans, embassy staff and nationals from partner nations since August 13. Since April the total is over 15,000.
But the UK had little choice but to start closing the evacuation today, because US troops need time to pack up and go home before their August 31 deadline to leave.
Mr Wallace claimed the Baron Hotel had been closed on schedule despite the devastating attack, which did not cause any UK military or UK Government casualties.
He said: "We at 4.30am UK time closed the Baron Hotel [where British officials were processing departures], shut the processing centre and the gates were closed at Abbey Gates.
"We will process those people we have brought with us, the 1,000 people approximately inside the airfield now, and we will seek a way to continue to find a few people in the crowds where we can.
"But overall the main processing has now closed and we have a matter of hours."
He told LBC Radio: “On the ARAP scheme, we’ve actually doubled the number of people we thought we would get out and we are now way above the original.
“It will go over 10,000 we think today, from April.
“But we think there will be circa between 800 and 1,100 ARAP who didn’t make it through.”
A Home Office spokesperson told Politico: “The UK has a proud history of protecting people in life-threatening situations and we are determined to help as many Afghans as possible through the Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme.”
