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Thousands Pour Over Border as Panic Hits Afghan Refugees
QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct 19 (News Agencies) - Thousands of fear-stricken Afghan refugees poured across the border into northwest Pakistan on Friday in the largest single daily influx since U.S. airstrikes began on neighboring Afghanistan, U.N. officials said.
"A wave of panic has swept the border at Chaman, with more than 3,500 crossing this morning," Fatoumata Kaba, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"The situation there is reportedly chaotic with panic stricken Afghans who say they fled very heavy bombardments on Kandahar last night that continued into this morning."
A spokesman at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva said between 50,000 and 60,000 Afghans had fled to Pakistan since U.S.-led military strikes started on October 7th.
Kaba said 2,000 refugees remained at Chaman - a crossing about 60 miles northwest of Quetta - after being separated from their families as they fled overnight from Kandahar, the stronghold of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.
The border town of Chaman channels the main flow of refugees into Pakistan, a BBC online report said. Nearly 2.5 million Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan before the attacks, and Pakistan says that it cannot cope with the skyrocketing influx.
At least half the 100,000-strong population of Kandahar is believed to have fled the city, which has come under heavy U.S. bombardment because of the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington.
Kaba said the UNHCR would ask Pakistan for permission to deliver emergency food and water supplies to the border.
Earlier this week, the United Nations estimated around 2,000 Afghan refugees were crossing into Pakistan each day. Most of them are crossing illegally as the border is officially closed to people without visas.
That figure had more than doubled by Thursday.
Aid groups and the United Nations struggled to find sites for refugee settlements. The region around Chaman and Quetta is already suffering a chronic water shortage due to the harshest drought in memory.
Oxfam's manager for refugee response in the Western province of Baluchistan, Willy Newman, said the British-based charity was on schedule to set up two refugee settlements for up to 50,000 people by the end of October.
Eventually the sites would be capable of holding 200,000 people but additional water resources would have to be found, Newman said.
Oxfam resumed clearing water canals at the Darra and Roghani sites near Chaman on Thursday after a two-week break because of security threats caused by violent anti-U.S. protests.
But the canal work had to be interrupted following the discovery of unexploded rockets and landmines left over from the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Newman said local police would clear the sites.
The UNHCR's Kaba added that 6,200 plastic sheets and 10,350 blankets had arrived in Quetta while further foreign aid was expected from Norway in the coming days.
The UNHCR spokesman in Geneva, Ron Redmond, said "more than 50,000, probably 60,000 or more" Afghans had now arrived in the Peshawar and Quetta areas of Pakistan, adding that the opening of the border at Chaman had been erratic.
"Some days the border is open for people who have documents, some days it's totally closed. Some days it's open to people coming across who are obviously in need of assistance and I think that appears to be the case today," Redmond said.
Many people are paying smugglers about $50 each for transport from Kandahar to the border before embarking on a 15-hour trek across the mountains into Pakistan, he added.
Redmond said there were "not huge numbers" crossing into Iran, whose border with Afghanistan is also officially closed.
He said about 4,000 people had "voluntarily" returned to Afghanistan from Iran.
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