- Title: VARIOUS: WOUNDED AFGHAN REFUGEES CROSS CHAMAN BORDER INTO PAKISTAN
- Date: 24th October 2001
- Summary: (U5)CHAMAN BORDER, PAKISTAN (OCTOBER 23, 2001) (REUTERS) 1. SLV QUIET BORDER CROSSING; MV WOMEN WALKING ACROSS BORDER (2 SHOTS) 0.07 2. SLV AFGHAN REFUGEES AND THEIR BELONGINGS SITTING ON AFGHAN SIDE OF BORDER IN WEISH 0.12 3. SLV TRUCKS FULL OF AFGHAN REFUGEES BELONGINGS WAITING IN WEISH (3 SHOTS) 0.28 4. SLV PAKISTAN SECURITY AT T
- Embargoed: 8th November 2001 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CHAMAN BORDER, PAKISTAN AND SPIN BULDAK, AFGHANISTAN
- City:
- Country: Afghanistan
- Reuters ID: LVADOLWLE4EZBNPH6AF6UIE27SJU
- Story Text: Some fourteen wounded Afghan refugees, including
children, have crossed the Chaman border into Pakistan after
authorities said they would keep the crossing open only for
people needing urgent medical care.
UNICEF says they counted around 2,500 refugees in
no-man's-land where 200 tents have been erected under the
watchful eye of the Taliban border guards.
Pakistan said on Tuesday (October 22) that the Chaman
border would remain closed to Afghan refugees who have been
massing on the Afghan side since the weekend, and the crossing
was relatively quiet.
But, thousands were estimated to have crossed further down
from Chaman over the last four days.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
estimated some 15 000 refugees had entered through the closed
border during that time.
More have been smuggled through unofficial routes and
disappeared into nearby villages, old refugee camps, and the
Balochistan capital of Quetta.
The UNCHR estimated some 10 000 Afghan refugees were massed
on the Afghan side of the border, waiting to get across.
However, the government said it would allow injured refugees
to come into Pakistan and fourteen Afghans were rushed to
Chaman hospital on Tuesday, some with severe injuries.
At least five of them had to be transferred to Quetta's
civil hospital for urgent treatment as doctors in Chaman said
they would not cope.
"We have no anaesthetist, but recently they have provided
an anaesthetist which will come after two or three hours from
Quetta. We have no equipment to manage these patients
orthopaedically and no implants," doctor Sajer Nasser Asaksai
said.
One Afghan refugee from Kandahar said his child had been
hit by the U.S. bombing there and that he had rushed to the
border for treatment.
Despite the government's decision to maintain its closed
border policy, the United Nations is preparing for a flood of
refugees.
The UNHCR has prep-positioned 2,400 blankets, 100 plastic
sheets, stones and jerry cans in Chaman which they plan to
immediately move to the camps should the government open the
border. It has already given tents to Afghan refugee women
standing on the Afghan side of the border waiting to get into
Pakistan.
Another 200 tents have been erected in Spin Buldak, on the
Afghan side, close to no man's land.
The World Food Programme (WFP) delivered high energy
biscuits there on Monday whilst local farmers provided the
refugees with water.
UNICEF spokesman Gordon Weiss said they had delivered
medicine, drinking kits and jumpers for the children staying
in no-man's-land.
United Nations monitors have said that Taliban border
guards have forced fleeing refugees into makeshift camps but
that many were slipping away at night to cross the border into
Pakistan. In Quetta injured refugees are coming into the civil
hospital, in a small, but steady flow.
One man, Hidayat Ullah, was in Kandahar when he was hit by
a bullet. He lived near an ammunitions factory bombed by U.S.
planes on Monday morning at 9 o'clock, he said.
Doctors at the hospital said a bullet was lodged in Ullah's
spine and that he was paralysed from the neck down.
He was first driven to Spin Buldak, on the Afghan side of
the Chaman border before he was rushed to hospital.
Twelve-year-old Abdul Habib came from the Afghan city of
Lashkar Gah. He was injured when a wall inside his home
collapsed during a U.S. bombing raid.
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