ISLAMABAD – Over 6,000 people from Pakistan’s North Waziristan province fleeing to Afghanistan to take refuge due to the recent targeted military action, consider the neighbouring country safer than their own, a media report said Friday.
“Keeping in view the long stay and plight of thousands of internally displaced persons of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in and off relief camps, I have made my mind to take my family to Afghanistan instead of keeping them in grimy tents in the adjacent Bannu district,” Dawn online quoted a tribesman from Miranshah.
Several families have already crossed over to Afghanistan’s Khost province next to FATA, due to uncertainty.
Displaced people from other tribal agencies in Pakistan, including South Waziristan, Kurram and Khyber, have been living in awful conditions in and off camps for as long as seven years.
The Taliban shura has asked the tribesman to move to areas close to the Afghanistan border instead of proceeding to relief camps in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
An Afghan official said that families crossed over to Khost since the fighting between Pakistani security forces and the Taliban began.
“The provincial government has provided land for the refugees in Gurbaz, Nadirshah Kot, Mandozai and Esmail Khail districts of Khost, while a site has also been reserved for them in the provincial capital,” the official said. — IANS
