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Rocks thrown, guns fired as refugees reach border
©Associated Press
© St. Petersburg Times, CHAMAN, Pakistan -- Pakistani border guards opened fire Sunday to force back a crowd of hundreds of Afghans demanding to be allowed into the country. Doctors said a 13-year-old boy was wounded. Pakistan relaxed border controls Friday to allow several thousand Afghans to enter the country without proper papers but clamped down again Sunday despite tens of thousands of people trying to escape U.S. bombing around Kandahar. As the crowd surged forward and began throwing stones, Pakistani border guards opened fire. Officials said they fired in the air, but doctors at a local hospital said one boy was struck by a bullet. Two border guards were slightly injured by stones. U.N. workers say 10,000 to 15,000 Afghan civilians have crowded into the border no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Families on Sunday squatted in the dust, or sought shade under buses and old cars, waiting in hopes of getting across. Many of those who managed to push through and enter Pakistan ended up stopped at a Pakistani checkpoint about 3 miles south of Chaman, where authorities inspected papers and decided who would be permitted to continue. Those who were turned back simply sneaked by through the nearby hills out of sight of the checkpoint guards and then returned to the main highway south toward Quetta. Pakistan allowed no refugees through Sunday, after letting about 5,000 cross the previous day. That was the biggest single-day influx since the U.S. military campaign opened Oct. 7. Afghanistan's neighbors have closed their borders to Afghan refugees, after taking in millions during two previous decades of conflict. U.N. officials renewed appeals Sunday for countries to open their frontiers on an emergency basis.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
