“Significant rise” in Afghan refugee arrivals

The government in Islamabad had dispatched a team to verify the numbers of those arriving so that the refugees could quickly be transferred to a camp with adequate sanitation and receive urgent assistance, UNHCR stated on Friday. Some 3,000 new arrivals had already been moved to the New Shamshatoo refugee camp, about 10 km from Jalozai, the agency’s spokesman Kris Janowski said.

“There has been a significant rise in the number of Afghans arriving in Pakistan” through September, Janowski said. On Tuesday 26 September nearly 500 refugees crossed over but, on average, they had been crossing at the rate of 30 families [or about 200 people] a day, he added. While most of the new arrivals had been arriving at Torkham border post, UNHCR learned on Wednesday last that some 50 families had crossed at Chitral, some 300 km north of Peshawar. Chitral is just across from Badakshan Province, the last stronghold of the Northern Alliance opposing the advancing Taliban movement, and the latest flashpoint in Afghanistan’s long-running conflict. There are already 1.3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan.