PESHAWAR, June 15: The authorities on Friday bulldozed homes at an Afghan refugee camp earmarked for closure, stirring anger among residents unwilling to return to their troubled homeland.

Police and officials supervised the destruction of about 10 houses at the Kacha Garhi camp, a warren of mud-walled houses near Peshawar, on Friday morning.

None of the buildings were occupied and residents said clearance work began weeks earlier after families began accepting UN assistance to cross the border to their homeland.

But knots of men in the once-busy bazaar — now lined with rubble from demolished shops –eyed the work with resentment, saying eviction would wreck their already marginal existence.

“We will not go to Afghanistan. There is no peace, no water, and no place to live. Otherwise everyone loves their own country,” said Shaikh Mohammed, a 60-year-old man with a long white beard and a black and white turban.

“We spent 20, 30 years in Pakistan and we are happy here.”

Katchagari is one of four camps — together housing more than 220,000 refugees — that Pakistan aims to close by September as part of a drive to persuade Afghans to go home.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf said the camps were havens for Taliban militants and drug smugglers from Afghanistan, source of most of the world’s illicit opium and heroin.

Officials initially set Friday as the deadline for the closure of Kacha Garhi and the Jungle Pir Alizai camp near Quetta. However, both have been given a little more time.

Saddiq Ahmed Khan, a government official watching the work on Friday, said Kacha Garhi residents now have until June 30 to leave. He said officials had faced no resistance.

A recent UN report found that 84 per cent of Afghans still in Pakistan do not intend to return. Of those, 41 per cent cited insecurity as the primary reason.—AP