November 2, 2001	Friday	Shaba’an 15, 1422

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

QUETTA, Nov 1: The authorities did not allow hundreds of Afghan refugees to cross into Pakistan on Thursday as there was no more capacity in the temporary protection camp established by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) at Killi Fiazo near Chaman border.

Around 500 refugees, including women, children and old, were seen waiting the whole day at the border despite dusty weather. The border security officials closed the entry point by putting barricades.

“We have no other option but to close the border for fresh arrival of Afghan refugees into Pakistan as the temporary protection camp at the border has been filled up,” a senior border security official told this correspondent over telephone.

He said the authorities had stopped registration of the refugees as 384 families had arrived in the camp, designed to take a maximum of 325 families.

A sign was posted at Killi Fiazo in three languages, saying that there would be no further registration of new arrivals and they should go back across the border to Spin Buldak, UNHCR officials said.

The UNHCR officials were negotiating with the authorities to open up another site nearby, in the light of the poor health situation and since other vulnerable people continued to wait.

The number of those accepted into the camp since the site was opened just over a week ago is 1,897, including 1,265 children, 19 percent of the families are led by women.

Sources said that till the opening of a new camp, no refugee would be registered at Killi Fiazo.

The refugees have received a package of aid, including tents, blankets or quilts, cooking utensils and other non-food items, from UNHCR, and food from World Food Programme. Workers were providing medical facilities to the refugees.

However, refugees say the health situation in the make-shift Taliban-controlled camp at Spin Buldak in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly.

UNHCR medical workers say individuals who passed through the camp on their way to Pakistan reported cases of severe malnutrition as well as dysentery among the children.

According to the UNHCR the refugees crossing the border into Pakistan alleged that the Taliban were preventing people, including those in need of urgent medical attention, from leaving Afghanistan.