QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency said Wednesday it fears Pakistan could be flooded with up to 300,000 refugees fleeing U.S. air strikes on neighboring Afghanistan.(Read photo caption below) Officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said they were planning for an influx of that size even though Pakistan says it can accept no more refugees and has closed its borders to all Afghans except the vulnerable and those with valid papers.
``We expect some 300,000 refugees in a short time,'' UNHCR spokeswoman Fatouma Kaba told a news conference in Quetta, capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan that borders Afghanistan and Iran.
She said half this number could come to Baluchistan, where the UNHCR had opened an emergency camp near a crossing where refugees and border guards clashed after Pakistan bowed to international pressure to let in Afghans fleeing the raids.
The UNHCR had pitched some 100 tents at Killi Haji Faizo village outside the border town of Chaman to accommodate up to 1,000 of the most vulnerable refugees, such as women, children and old men.
Another UNHCR spokesman, Yousef Hasan, said the estimate of 300,000 refugees was for planning purposes. The worst scenario envisaged up to one million refugees.
Pakistan, which wants the refugees housed in camps inside Afghanistan, says it will let in old men, women and children. It says it has already allowed more than three million Afghans into the country and cannot take more.
UNHCR officials said they would set up two main camps in Baluchistan, each with a capacity to hold 50,000 people, in the hope Islamabad would relax its policy at some stage.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A family of newly-arrived Afghan refugees from Mazar-i-sharif rests at a new refugee camp near the Chaman border crossing, northwest of Quetta, October 24, 2001. Pakistan, under international pressure to let in Afghans fleeing U.S. air strikes, allowed the United Nations to open the camp near a crossing where refugees and border guards have clashed. (Mian Khursheed/Reuters)