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UN Alarmed Over New Afghan Refugee Influx in Pakistan VOA News 19 Feb 2002 20:48 UTC 
The United Nations is expressing concern over the rising number of Afghan refugees crossing into Pakistan seeking food and safety.
U.N. refugee agency spokesmen Kris Janowski says as many as 15,000 refugees - most of them ethnic Pashtun Kuchis - have reached the Chaman border area in the last ten days. He says the influx is truly alarming. The newest refugees join 35,000 others huddled in the Killi Faizo camp since January.
International aid agencies launched a huge relief operation inside Afghanistan late last year, after the Taleban administration was crushed by U.S.-led forces in the war against terrorism. But much of the country remains unstable and inaccessible to relief workers. Aid efforts have been further slowed by blocked roads from some of the heaviest snowfalls in recent years.
Pakistan and Iran together house more than three million Afghan refugees who have fled two decades of fighting and more than four years of severe drought.
Authorities say about 140,000 northern Afghan refugees, most of them ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, have gone home since January 1.
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