On Saturday morning, a former interpreter for an American company in Kabul plunged into a mass of humanity outside a gate at Kabul airport with her family in tow.

Even as she was jostled and elbowed by people in the throng, she pushed ahead, desperate to secure a flight out of the country for everyone accompanying her — her husband, two-year-old daughter, disabled parents, three sisters and a cousin.

Then the crowd surged. The entire family was slammed to the ground. People trampled them where they lay, the woman recalled just hours later.

She couldn’t breathe, so she tried to tear off her abaya, a robe-like dress.

As she struggled to her feet, she said, she searched for her toddler. The girl was dead, trampled to death by the mob.

“I felt pure terror,” the woman said in a telephone interview from Kabul. “I couldn’t save her.”

The mother said the family was able to bring the girl’s body back for burial. She wept as she recalled how she would try to ease her daughter’s fears whenever gunshots rang out in their neighbourhood: she had told her they were “crackers” — firecrackers.

“My baby was such a brave child,” she said. “When she heard the gunshots, she would just yell out, ‘Crackers!’”

She said she and her family were unlikely to return to the airport anytime soon. “I’d rather die a dignified death here at home than die in such an undignified way.”

On Saturday, seven people were killed in a crush at the gates. The Taliban on Sunday fired in the air and used batons to force people desperate to flee to form orderly queues outside Kabul airport, witnesses said.

There were no major injuries on Sunday as gunmen beat back the crowds and long lines of people formed, the witnesses said, and Washington said it was now able to get large numbers of Americans into the airport.

The US will use 18 commercial aircraft to help transport people who have been evacuated from Afghanistan, moving them from temporary locations after they have landed from Kabul, the Pentagon said on Sunday.

Britain’s defence ministry said seven Afghans were killed in the crush around the airport on Saturday as thousands tried to get a flight out.

Sky News showed soldiers on a wall on Saturday attempting to pull the injured from the crush and spraying people with a hose to prevent them from getting dehydrated.

“Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible,” the ministry said.

A Nato official said at least 20 people had died in the past seven days in and around the airport. Some were shot and others died in stampedes, witnesses have said.