Afghan national team footballer Zaki Anwari died in a fall from a United States plane at Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday, the Afghan news agency Ariana said on Thursday.

Crowds of people seeking to flee Afghanistan have spilled into the airport since Taliban insurgents swept to power on Sunday, many seen trying to board a moving plane.

Ariana said Zaki Anwari fell from a USAF Boeing C-17 and that the death had been confirmed by the General Directorate for Sport.

Military flights evacuating diplomats and civilians from Afghanistan resumed early on Tuesday after the runway at Kabul's airport was cleared of thousands of people desperate to flee after the Taliban seized the capital.

The number of civilians at the airport had thinned out, a Western security official at the facility told Reuters, a day after chaotic scenes in which U.S. troops fired to disperse crowds and people clung to a U.S. military transport plane as it taxied for takeoff.

"Many people who were here yesterday have gone home," the official said. Reuters witnesses, however, could still hear occasional shots coming from the direction of the airport, while streets elsewhere in the city appeared calm.

Britain's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab issued a similar statement Tuesday, telling Sky News that "the position at the airport is stabilizing" and that the airport's stability is "absolutely key."

U.S. forces took charge of the airport, their only way to fly out of the country, on Sunday, as the militants were winding up a dramatic week of advances across the country with their takeover of the capital without a fight. Flights were suspended for much of Monday, when at least five people were killed, witnesses said, although it was unclear whether they had been shot or crushed in a stampede.

Media reported two people fell to their deaths from the underside of a U.S. military aircraft after it took off, crashing to their deaths on roofs of homes near the airport.