A British soldier involved in the evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan has described scenes of chaos as people desperately tried to flee the country. Private Jake Howarth, of 2nd Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, recalled hearing the sound of gunshots and being surrounded by barbed wire as he touched down at Kabul airport to help the UK evacuation effort following the Taliban takeover. “There was quite a fear factor when we got there and obviously it was dark at night so nobody knew what was going on,” he said. He added: “You had barbed wire in a square and loads of the civilians, the population in there, just waiting to get on a flight. “You saw soldiers going around [and] weapons and everything. “It looked like it wasn’t organised at all. When we were walking through all you could hear was constant gunshots at that time. “If you looked at people’s …