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CNN Saturday Morning News
Afghans Continue to Flee Country
Aired October 20, 2001 - 07:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: As U.S. forces strike Afghanistan by land and air, Afghans continue to flee their country by the thousands. The U.N. says the number of Afghans in flight is surging.
CNN's Amanda Kibel is live via videophone now from the border town of Chaman, Pakistan -- Amanda.
AMANDA KIBEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Martin, yes, we've been on this border now for some four and a half hours. And right now, the border is semi-sealed. Now, effectively, what that means is that they have brought down some barriers. They have allowed people through who have Pakistan identity cards. For the rest, they're holding them back.
And you can see behind me, there is a group of people, a large group of people standing at the border waiting to cross. Most of those people are, in fact, Afghan refugees who do not have Pakistani visas, who do not have Pakistani identity cards. They are now not being allowed to pass at all. They're not allowed to cross through right now.
This morning when we were here, however, the border was open. Pakistan officials say that the border remains closed in theory. However, when we were here earlier today, there were hundreds of people streaming through this border. Many of those people refugees, mostly women with children, come with men who had brought them here to deliver them and were planning to go back.
Most of these refugees from Kandahar, which is about a two and a half hour drive from here, some 60 kilometers away, they described to us that Kandahar at the moment is very, very tense. They say there's been a lot of bombing there.
They described to us also a number of civilian injuries. They spoke of one family particularly in a house next to a Taliban office. Their house had been bombed, and the house had collapsed on top of the family. They told us how even now they continue to try and take the family's bodies out of the house.
So the people here describing a situation in Kandahar right now of which they are very, very, afraid. They have come to Pakistan hoping that they can find some safety, but I have to say that right now, the UNHCR, which is the main aid agency on the ground, is not ready for these refugees. They say that they have no camps in place, and that we see ourselves. The camps to receive new refugees are not ready. They have no facilities for these people.
Many of them come across the border, they go into the villages, and they disappear. And from there, they never receive any aid at all. So they come in hungry, many of them are coming telling us that they haven't eaten for a few days. And the prospects for them are not very good on this side either, Martin.
SAVIDGE: Amanda, did the refugees give you any sort of picture as to how many more may be waiting to cross, or how many are on the road, and what conditions of travel are like?
KIBEL: Absolutely. We are being told by the UNHCR, their official figures of those waiting to cross on the Afghanistan side are some 10,000. The border behind me, there are trucks lined up, and we are told by officials here on the ground, local officials, that those -- that line of trucks in fact stretches all the way back to Kandahar.
At this border crossing here, I would estimate there are roughly 5,000 people right at the border waiting to come in. So there are an enormous amount of people still waiting to come in. In fact, we spoke to a military official earlier on. He told us the reason that they've now sealed this border so tightly is that they are afraid that they will have some 20,000 people rushing the border.
We have seen in the past few minutes, in fact, ambulances coming from the Pakistan side, going over to the Afghanistan side, where we -- where -- behind me...
(AUDIO GAP)
KIBEL: ... picking up some injured and bringing them in. Some of the injured have been brought to the hospital here in Cheman. We spoke to a doctor there who told us over the past two days he's had some 10 injuries. Most of them have been treated, given first aid, then they're moved on to Quetta to the hospitals there. Some of them have also been sent back, Martin.
SAVIDGE: CNN's Amanda Kibel on the Afghan-Pakistani border at Chaman. Thank you very much.
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