Afghan refugee crisis 'worsening'

The United Nations has said that the refugee crisis on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has descended into chaos, with thousands of people fleeing the US attacks on their homeland.

Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said 3,500 people arrived in the Pakistani border town of Chaman earlier today and the influx is continuing.

He said the situation is being made worse because the Pakistani border guards are demanding bribes from Afghans trying to cross over.

Most refugees arriving in Chaman said they were fleeing the US attacks on Kandahar.

29-year-old Abdul Qayyum said thousands of people have left the city because of the devastation caused by the US bombing.

"We are not coming here by choice," he said, after he arrived in Chaman with his wife and three children.

"We are helpless, we are poor, we don’t have food, we don’t have medicine and we cannot sleep in our own houses. We know we will lead a miserable life in Pakistan in tents. We have come here just to save our children."

Another refugee, 42-year-old Amir Agha, said he saw bodies lying in Kandahar’s streets.

He said people are dying in hospitals because doctors do not have the medicines needed to save them.

Samiullah, a 50-year-old shop-owner from Jalalabad, said he crossed into Pakistan with his wife and their three children after an eight-hour mule ride to the border area of Lindi Kodal.

He said they paid £17 each, a veritable fortune for the impoverished Afghan population, for the transport.

"We didn’t have anything to eat the whole way," he said.

"It was a terrible journey, but we were lucky that we had money to pay those people."

Samiullah said he saw hundreds of people fleeing the US attacks, most of them with little more than the clothes on their backs.

"They were in a miserable condition. Most of them were women and children and old people," he said.