Some earthquake-hit local families were recently deported by Pakistan – local mediapublished at 03:54 British Summer Time
Some families affected by the earthquake had just recently been deported from Pakistan, according to local news outlet Tolo News.
Mohammad Aslam, who lives in Ghaziabad village in Kunar, said he’d lost five members of his family.
“The whole house collapsed on us. We lost five people – my father, two of my uncle’s sons, and two of my cousins’ children,” he told Tolo News, external.
It’s unclear what circumstances Aslam was in before being deported by Pakistan.
The quake-hit area of Kunar, which was hit by an earthquake late on Sunday, sits near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
According to the UN, Pakistan had earlier this year accelerated its drive to expel undocument Afghans. In March, NGO Human Rights Watch said, external Pakistani authorities had been “coercing” Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan – despite the risk of persecution by the Taliban and dire economic conditions.
More than 3.5 million Afghans have been living in Pakistan, according to the UN’s refugee agency. Pakistan has taken in Afghans through decades of war, but the government says the high number of refugees now poses risks to national security and causes pressure on public services.