ISLAMABAD, Aug 6: The United Nations on Tuesday called for increased police protection after the repatriation office established by the UNHCR was attacked by angry Afghan refugees.

Following the attack, the repatriation office suspended its activities and was closed temporarily.

According to the UNHCR, the incident occurred when an Afghan refugee, protesting against refusal of assistance, set his clothes on fire and incited a crowd to throw stones at the UN staff.

“The man, whose claim for the assistance to return to Afghanistan had been rejected on Monday because he had already received assistance, was treated at a UNHCR clinic and discharged after examination in a hospital,” the UN refugee agency said.

No staff member of the UN or its local partner in the repatriation programme, the Society for Human Rights and Prisoners Aid, was injured, but several window panes of the office were smashed.

The UN body claimed that the refugee set his clothes on fire after pouring kerosene on them. He doused the flames with water and then shouted at the crowd, which began to hurl stones at the UN staff, organizing the voluntary repatriation of refugees, it said.

The disturbances, the UNHCR said, followed a tightening of controls at the Islamabad Voluntary Repatriation Centre to weed out refugee ‘recyclers’ — people who received the UN assistance to return to Afghanistan and then returned to Pakistan to seek further payments.

The UNHCR provides refugees with a travel allowance to help cover the costs of transportation. The amount varies with the distance travelled and is paid on arrival at the destination inside Afghanistan.

More than a fifth of those seeking travel assistance have been rejected for filing bogus claims.

In the current year, 250,420 families, consisting of 13,548,63 individuals, seeking to return to Afghanistan, were processed in the country. A total of 57,788 families were rejected as fraudulent.

The number of the refugees repatriated from Pakistan is three times more than the original number expected for 2002, forcing the UNHCR to reallocate funds for the purpose from other programmes.

The UNHCR intends to resume operations on Wednesday with additional police protection.