The suicide bomber driving a sedan packed with explosives struck in the early hours of the morning, as the minibus crawled through Kabul’s traffic.

A piece of shrapnel pierced Amrit Rokaya Chhetri’s left ear. He was lucky. Nine of his follow security workers, hired by a contractor to protect Canada’s embassy in Afghanistan, were killed immediately as metal tore through the packed bus in 2016. Ultimately, 13 Nepalis were among the dead.

They were less than 700 feet from their dormitory.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

“During the day I play the harmonium to forget, or I hang out with my friends,” said Chhetri, now 41 years old and living in his home village in Nepal. “If that day haunts me at night, I go to the gym for physical exercise, as my doctors suggested.”

The attack five years ago focused attention on the little-known but crucial role that Nepali security personnel play in protecting officials, diplomats and companies in Afghanistan. Hired by private contractors, many are ethnic Gurkhas who have served in the Nepali, Indian or British military, and they often work under conditions that have drawn protests from labour activists.

Now Nepal is trying to get thousands of its people out of Afghanistan. The task is daunting. Reports from Afghanistan suggest the Taliban are tracking those who worked with western countries. The exact number of Nepali nationals in the country is unclear, and the country does not have an embassy in Afghanistan and lacks resources for helping people stuck there.

The government of Sher Bahadur Deuba, Nepal’s new Prime Minister, is urging western nations to help rescue Nepali security guards while they evacuate their own citizens from Kabul.

“We have made some diplomatic efforts to coordinate their evacuation,” Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, Nepal’s minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs, said in an interview with The New York Times.

Karki said evacuating Nepali contractors has been complicated by the fact that many have worked in Afghanistan illegally for years, making it difficult to find and count, much less rescue, them.

New York Times News Service