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Taliban Claim More Deaths in U.S. Raids
KABUL, Oct 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A senior Taliban official said 18 civilians were killed in air raids on Kabul on Sunday and at least 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in air attacks in the western city of Herat over the last three days.
Abdul Hanan Hemat, chief of the Taliban's Bakhtar Information Agency, gave the toll as he provided details of the latest U.S.-led operations by jets and helicopters in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
U.S. fighter jets flew over Kabul early Sunday dropping at least four bombs around the Afghan capital.
Three loud explosions were heard before dawn from the east of the city while a fourth, just after dawn, appeared to be further out, residents said.
Hemat said 18 people were killed, 23 injured and 17 houses destroyed in the bombings. He said Parod Gajaded - in the Khair Khana district of northern Kabul - was badly hit, AFP reported.
The Afghani official said between 50 and 60 civilians had been killed by U.S.-led bombardments in Herat and 150 others have been wounded.
Hemat said the village of Eshaq Salaiman, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Herat, was bombed by U.S.-led jets on Saturday night, leaving eight dead and 15 to 20 people injured.
CNN International reported that Kandahar was in a state of chaos, as thousands continued fleeing the city for the Pakistan border.
Most Afghanis know by now that the border with Pakistan - and those with Iran and Central Asia - are officially closed, BBC added.
But even inside Pakistan, the refugees face a grim future, news agencies reported. The Pakistani government is only allowing new refugee camps to be built in the border area, a remote and inhospitable region.
Aid agencies have pleaded with the government to be allowed to build camps elsewhere. They say their work is frequently hampered by attacks on their staff in an area that is notoriously insecure.
Moreover, the area lacks much basic infrastructure, making it harder to supply essentials such as water - especially important as the region suffers the worst drought in 30 years.
"A wave of panic has swept the border," a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told AFP.
Mohammed Gul, a refugee from Kandahar, told the BBC that he worked in a military hospital, but that medicines had run out.
He also went on to say that, "Bombs were hitting people's houses."
"They damaged lots of houses and they injured and killed lots of innocent people. We were there and I saw about 50 people who died and some became injured. Everyone is looking to the sky and waiting and thinking when will the American aircraft come and starting killing them," he continued.
Even before the American strikes, Pakistan was sheltering some 2.5 million Afghans who had fled years of civil war and drought. It says it cannot cope with another influx.
Pakistani officials say 50,000 Afghans have crossed into Pakistan since the crisis began.
UNHCR chief, Ruud Lubbers, warned on Friday that hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees will need urgent help in the coming weeks, news agencies reported.
Lubbers said that his agency had prepared camps on the border with Pakistan, which could harbor up to 300,000 people. But he said this figure was sure to rise steeply.
The UNHCR said it would ask Pakistan to allow them to deliver emergency supplies to the area.
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