MIRANSHAH, Feb 2: As the situation getting tenser all the time in the eastern Afghanistan province of Paktia, hundreds of people have started to migrate to safer places to escape the fighting between rival groups for the control of the province.

Eyewitnesses said that hundreds of people were dead and injured, and houses destroyed in Gardez in the fighting between the forces of Badshah Khan and Saifullah for the governorship of the province. The injured were shifted to a hospital in Khost.

The locals have started leaving their homes for safer places in the neighbouring Khost and Ghazni provinces as the situation is still very fluid, the witness said.

Authorities in Kabul sent delegations accompanied by US forces to the troubled areas to effect a ceasefire and save the situation from worsening, the witnesses revealed.