The Afghan director of a school for girls dedicated to an Italian newspaper correspondent killed in Afghanistan is trying desperately to gain access to the Kabul airport for evacuation, with anxiety growing as the end of flights nears.

Shir Ahmad Mohammadi has sent messages to contacts in Italy as well as Italian officials in Kabul, saying that the Taliban are not allowing him and his family near the airport, Corriere della Sera reported on Thursday. "Help me, I can't go on. The Taliban are not allowing us to pass. They are asking for US documents that we don't have," Mohammadi wrote.

He is the director of a school in Herat province named for Maria Grazia Cutuli, a Corriere correspondent killed in 2001. He travelled by bus with his wife and two daughters, finding himself in the capital controlled by the Taliban and with foreign troops by now closed off in the airport. I served female students in Afghanistan, giving them the chance to study in the name of their country. Now it is time that I think of my daughters, and try to get them to safety,'' he wrote.

"I have my two daughters with me, what should I do, I cannot leave them to be treated in this way. I have to take care of their security and their dignity. That is why I made this trip." He said his wife and daughters are under increasing strain.

"I don't know how long we can keep going in these conditions,'' Mohammadi wrote.