KABUL, June 27: Fighting between supporters of rival warlords has erupted again in Afghanistan’s volatile north, leaving some 150 families homeless after their settlement was torched and looted, the United Nations said on Thursday.

“We have received reports that one settlement of some 150 families has been burnt. These reports also indicate that 17 other settlements have been looted,” UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told reporters in the Afghan capital.

“There are reports of population displacement, although we do not have numbers.”

Clashes erupted Monday when supporters of ex-communist general Abdul Rashid Dostam launched a dawn attack against loyalists of rival warlord Atta Mohammad in the northern village of Abdrang, a spokesman for Atta told AFP.

The spokesman said one person was killed in Abdrang in Jozjan province’s Sar-i-Pul district, some 120 kilometres south-west of main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Silva said fighting was still raging around Sar-i-Pul and in Sholgara district 50 kilometres south of Mazar late on Wednesday.

The clashes had forced three foreign aid workers to evacuate from Maimana, the capital of Faryab province adjacent to Jozjan. “Three international staff were relocated from Maimana to Mazar,” Silva said, adding that their base in Maimana had not been affected.

The aid-workers belonged to the International Organization for Migration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Foreign aid workers have suffered a string of attacks, including a gang rape, recently in the north, prompting them to withdraw female staff from field missions earlier this week and to consider suspending relief work in the area.—AFP