August 25, 2006	Friday	Rajab 29, 1427

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QUETTA, Aug 24: People wounded in clashes in Afghanistan were seeking medical treatment in Pakistan through the International Committee for Red Cross (ICRC). The number of people coming to Quetta for medical treatment surged in recent months after violence escalated between remnants of Taliban and allied forces in southern and central Afganistan.

Chief of the ICRC’s Quetta office Mr Paul Fruh told this correspondent here on Wednesday that the humanitarian organisation was referring injured Afghans to private hospital for treatment under the Geneva Convention.

He said that the number of injured people coming to Pakistan had jumped abruptly in July. “The ICRC has referred over 70 wounded people to a local private hospital in Quetta only in July,” Mr Paul Fruh said, adding that most of them were men.

The ICRC has set up hospitals in Quetta, Peshawar, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

He said that Afghans traditionally traveled to Pakistan for medical treatment. “We never ask them who they are. We give them medical facilities on humanitarian basis,” Mr Paul said. He said that the war wounded people who approached the ICRC for medical treatment mostly belonged to Uruzgan, Zabul, Helmand, Farah, Paktika and Kandahar regions.

“Recently, people injured after villages were bombed in different areas of Afghanistan were brought to Quetta because of a dearth of medical facilities in Afghanistan,” the ICRC Quetta office head said.

He said that when an injured man approached the ICRC, it was obligatory on the organisation to provide him full medical care under Geneva Convention of 1864, according to which wounded civilians and even combatants should be provided medical facilities if they approached the organisation without their guns.

He said that most of the people coming to Pakistan feared that they would be arrested by Afghan and allied forces if they approached any hospital in Afghanistan and would be labelled as Taliban.

He said that recently an old man had approached the ICRC’s Quetta office along with his daughter and another member of the family. He said that he had told them they they were the only survivors of a 30-member family living in Zabul. He said that they had been killed in a bombing in that area.

Commenting on the recent arrests of over two dozen of suspected Taliban from a private hospital in Quetta, he said that the police was empowered to arrest or release them. He said ICRC was only concerned with the humanitarian aspects of conflicts, adding that it did not indulged in any controversy.