Afghans leave Pakistan refugee camp

Afghans in Pakistan's largest refugee village have been forced to leave as a deadline to close the camp has passed.

More than 3,300 Afghans have left Jalozai for Afghanistan since March, following an agreement between elders in the camp and Pakistani authorities to leave between March 1 and April 15. > At least 70,000 Afghans in Jalozai, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, must now either relocate to another camp or return to Afghanistan.

"We would have liked to get another extension in our stay in the refugee village," Haji Zulfiqar, a camp resident, told UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. > "But, as apparent today, the government wants us to move, so now we are ready for it.

"It may not be possible for all Afghans to vacate the refugee village in two or three days. It would be a gradual process and we will require an understanding from the authorities and UNHCR."

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent, reporting from Jalozai, said: "This is a place that people have lived in for decades and therefore it is not difficult to imagine that there is a lot of pain that they have to go."

Abdul Rauf Khan, Pakistan's chief commissioner for Afghan refugees, said that Jalozai would be closed in an orderly and peaceful way, and that life-sustaining services such as food, water and electricity would not be stopped until the last Afghan leave the village.

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