September 20, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1429

KABUL, Sept 19: About 2,800 Pakistani families have crossed the border into northeastern Afghanistan over the past two months to escape fighting between extremists and security forces, an official said on Friday.

The families, which could number up to 20 people each, were mostly living with relatives just across the border in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar, Afghan deputy refugees minister Abdul Qader Ahadi said.

“They escaped from fighting between Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistan government,” Ahadi told AFP without being able to give a number of individual refugees. Most were women and children, he said.

The families, from tribes which straddle the porous border, had mostly gone to the Shigal, Marawara and Dangam areas opposite the Bajaur region, the minister said. “They are not permanent and will leave,” he said.

Some emergency assistance had been delivered through the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations and more assistance was being planned, Ahadi said.

Pakistanis fleeing clashes on their side of the border last year crossed over into Afghanistan’s Khost area, opposite North Waziristan, but later returned to their homes, he said.

The Red Cross said last month that more than 200,000 people had fled intensified fighting in areas along the Afghan border that serve as Taliban sanctuaries. About 14,000 people were in Afghanistan’s Kunar, it said.

There have been major clashes in recent weeks in Bajaur and other areas in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal zones along the border with Afghanistan.

Besides offensives by Pakistani forces, there have been several missile strikes blamed on US-led forces or CIA drones based in Afghanistan.

Those strikes have killed civilians as well as militants.

Pakistan is already home to about two million Afghan refugees.—AFP