WorlPosted at: Aug 10 2021 12:37AM Thousands of Afghans flee to Kabul as Taliban overrun more provinces
Kabul, Aug 9 (UNI) With the Taliban sweeping across more provinces in Afghanistan, thousands of Afghan families have fled to capital Kabul, and are living on the streets and in parks.
The Taliban on Monday captured Aibak, the capital of the northern province of Samangan, the sixth provincial capital to be taken over by the Islamist militia in four days.
The Taliban have already taken over Kunduz, Takhar, Jowzjan, Sar-e-Pol, Nimruz, while fierce fighting is raging between the militants and government forces in Herat, Kandahar and Helmand.
The Taliban also said on Monday that they were moving in on Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan’s largest city.
Amid the raging fighting going on in 15 provinces, thousands of families have fled to Kabul from Kunduz, Takhar and Baghlan provinces. They have been camping in Sar-e-Shamali and Khairkhana areas in Kabul, a media report said.
Hundreds of people who have been displaced from northern Kunduz province are living in a park in Police District 15 of Kabul city. Families, including children, the elderly and wounded members, are camping in Kabul, with many of them not knowing of the fate of their adult male members, who are the sole breadwinners, said Khaama Press.
The families said they had no information about their menfolk, and had managed to save themselves and the children after the situation deteriorated in the provincial capital of Kunduz province.
The Afghan government is yet to provide them with food and shelter, but local people have been supplying food to the displaced people.
The Afghanistan Ministry of Refugees said the number of Internally Displaced People (IDP) has been unprecedented and providing them with basic facilities has been difficult due to the war.
According to the ministry, 75,000 families have been rendered homeless in the past five months of the fighting.
The people have mostly been displaced from Kandahar, Kunduz, Nimroz, and other provinces where the Taliban are fighting the ANDSF inside the cities.
Dozens of children are among the displaced.
The displaced persons are facing a shortage of drinking water and medicine.
Meanwhile, calls to impose sanctions on Pakistan for Islamabad’s reported kowtowing with the Taliban have been mounting in Afghanistan. On Monday, #SanctionPakistan was trending on Twitter.
Along with that #EndProxyWar has also started to gather momentum.
This social media movement comes amid the sharp escalation in violence across the country and just days after Afghanistan’s UN ambassador, Ghulam Isaczai, pleaded with members of the UN Security Council to pressure the Taliban to engage in peace talks.
In his address to the meeting on the Afghanistan situation, Isaczai said the attacks launched around the country have been done with the 'direct support of more than 10,000 foreign terrorist fighters representing 20 groups', including Al-Qaeda and ISIS (Daesh).
He said that the Taliban ''continue to enjoy a safe haven in and supply and logistics line extended to their war machine from Pakistan."
Isaczai also said that reports and videos show Taliban fighters "congregating close to the Durand Line" frontier to enter Afghanistan.
He said Taliban hold fund-raising events in Pakistan, and that the dead are transferred over the border for mass burials, and the wounded Taliban militants are treated in Pakistani hospitals.
His statement added to the growing outcry among Afghans over the ongoing violence and the suffering being inflicted on the people.
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