A British father-of-two in Afghanistan who fears for his life says he cannot fly to safety in the UK because it would mean leaving his wife “all alone to die”.

The 42-year-old, who asked to be identified only as Omed, said he was “hiding at home” with his family in Kabul as Taliban forces took control of the country’s major cities and moved into the capital.

He fears his British citizenship and previous work on US army bases will make him and his family targets for the Taliban.

Omed has two children under the age of eight, who also have British nationality, but he said that because his wife is not a UK citizen, she could not get a visa to come to the country.

He told the PA news agency: “If I fly back to UK, how can I leave my wife all alone to die?

“As soon as they come to Kabul – obviously people know each other: neighbours, businesses and everything – they would come and if they don’t find me obviously my wife would be there.

“I cannot leave her – whatever happens, I would like to be with her.”

Omed, who was born in Afghanistan, arrived in the UK in 2001 as an asylum seeker after fleeing the Taliban, ultimately claiming citizenship.

He moved back to Afghanistan around 12 years later, when he believed it was safer, and began working with a company drilling water wells.

He said he has enough money to support his family back in the UK but has been told his wife cannot get a visa.

“They should at least show compassion because already they are taking embassy staff back to the UK,” Omed said.

“They might have had room to consider people who have Afghan wives and are able to support them back in the UK. It’s an emergency.”

Omed said he has only once been able to speak to anyone from the embassy, around two weeks ago, and was told there were no special circumstances that would allow him to take his wife to the UK.

He went to the British Embassy on Sunday morning, he added, but found that the building had been evacuated overnight.

He said he is trying to remain as calm as possible for the sake of his family.

“I’m really scared but I’m trying to, in front of them, to be calm and show that nothing will happen,” he said.

“If I show my feelings, what’s inside, to them probably they will start screaming.

“But deep down I know it’s not as easy as I’m trying to show them.

“It’s really scary because being a British national is one and working in the US army bases is a second danger for me.”

He said he plans to leave as soon as possible to go and stay with relatives in an area where people do not know him, before possibly trying to escape to a neighbouring country with his family.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has vowed to get as many as possible of the Afghans who worked with the UK out of the country as the Taliban stood poised to take control of the capital Kabul.

With President Ashraf Ghani fled, and insurgent fighters surrounding the capital, the Prime Minister said the situation was “extremely difficult”.

After chairing a meeting of the UK government’s Cobra contingencies committee he said the UK was determined to work with allies to prevent the country again becoming a “breeding ground for terror”.

However he faced a backlash from British MPs who said the West had been humiliated by insurgents armed with just basic weaponry.

MPs are expected to to vent their anger and frustration when they return to Westminster on Wednesday for an emergency recall of Parliament to discuss the crisis.

In the meantime, Mr Johnson said the Government’s priority was to assist the remaining British nationals as well as those Afghans who had helped the UK.

He said the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow had been at Kabul airport helping to process the applications of those seeking to leave.

“Our priority is to make sure that we deliver on our obligations to UK nationals in Afghanistan, to all those who helped the British effort in Afghanistan over 20 years, and to get them out as fast we can,” he said.

“We are going to get as many as we can out in the next few days.”

Britain has sent 600 troops – including Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade – to assist in the operation.

Meanwhile other Western countries were scrambling to get their people out, with helicopters shuttling from the US embassy to the airport while smoke was seen coming from the embassy rooftop as diplomats burned sensitive material.

With a new Taliban-led Afghan government expected to take power in a matter of days, or even hours, Mr Johnson said the UK would be working with allies to take a concerted approach to the new regime.

“We don’t want anybody to bilaterally recognise the Taliban,” he said.

“We want a united position among all the like-minded, as far as we can get one, so that we do whatever we can to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into a breeding ground for terror.”

However senior MPs expressed concern that the credibility of the West had been fundamentally damaged by its failure to support an ally 20 years after international forces first entered the country.

The chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, said it was “the biggest single foreign policy disaster since Suez” in the 1950s.

The Defence Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood told Times Radio: “This is completely humiliating for the West.

“We assembled the most incredible, technologically advanced alliance the world has ever seen and we are being defeated by an insurgency that’s armed with AK47s and RPGs.”

abour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the Prime Minister needed to set out plans to prevent the fall of the Afghan government turning into a humanitarian crisis, with thousands of displaced people trying to escape the Taliban.

There was particular concern about the plight of those Afghans who had worked with the UK and other Western countries, amid fears they would be targeted by the insurgents.

The Taliban insisted they were seeking a peaceful transfer of power and promised an amnesty for those who had worked with foreign countries or the Afghan government.

However such assurances were met with deep scepticism amid fears they would return to the hardline policies they pursued before they were forced out in 2001 – including the suppression of women and girls.

Mr Tugendhat told BBC News: “The real danger is that we are going to see every female MP murdered, we are going to see ministers strung up on street lamps.”

Labour called for the urgent expansion of the scheme to re-settle Afghans who had worked with the UK.

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said she had been inundated with appeals for help and that the Government had just hours to resolve the issue.

“Some of them have already been killed, others have received threats to themselves and their families.

“We have an obligation as a country to make sure that they are safe,” she told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend.

The Home Office said it had already resettled 3,300 Afghan staff and their families and was continuing to fulfil its “international obligations and moral commitments”.

Among senior parliamentarians there was shock at the speed of the Afghan collapse after the West had invested billions in building up the country’s armed forces.

In the course of little over a week many cities fell to the Taliban without a fight after tribal elders stepped in to negotiate the withdrawal of government forces in order to avoid bloodshed.

While much of the anger was directed at the US for its decision to withdraw its forces, precipitating the collapse, some MPs expressed concern that Britain could have done more to avert the crisis.

Mr Johnson said however that while the US decision had “accelerated things”, the end was inevitable.

“This has been in many ways something that has been a chronicle of an event foretold.

“We’ve known for a long time that this was the way things were going,” he said.