KANDAHAR: About 17,000 Afghan families from the Taliban bastion of Kandahar have fled their homes following months of heavy fighting between the insurgents and government forces despite peace talks, officials said.
Government forces and the Taliban have clashed regularly since October in the southern province, the birthplace of the hardline Taliban movement.
The insurgents have launched continuous attacks in several districts on the outskirts of the provincial capital Kandahar city, which still remains in the control of Afghan forces.
About 7,000 families — or 35,000 residents — from these districts have fled their homes and taken refuge in the capital, Dost Mohammad Nayab, director of the Kandahar Refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDP) Department said.
“We have set up camps and tents in several parts of the city for them. We have been able to provide only basic food items to about 2,000 families,” he said.
A further 10,000 families have been forced to leave their villages and flee to neighbouring villages or to relatives, Sardar Mohammad Barani, head of Natural Disasters Department in Kandahar said.
Barani said the fighting was ongoing in some areas and predicted a “humanitarian crisis”.
“It is freezing here. We only have a tent but no heater,” Zarghona, who was displaced from her home in the restive Zharai district of Kandahar told AFP.
“Because of the fighting we had to leave everything behind.”
AIRSTRIKE KILLS 5
Five civilians, including a child, were killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, local officials said on Thursday.
At least another four people were wounded in the attack that was carried out overnight in the Bushran area on the outskirts of Lashkargah city, provincial councillors Ataullah Afghan and Abdul Majeed Akhundzada said.
— AFP/dpa
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