Up to 90,000 Afghans said displaced by war

KABUL, Oct 4: Fighting between NATO-led forces and insurgents across southern Afghanistan has displaced an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 people over the past few months, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said today.

Violence in southern Afghanistan has surged since the spring with the Taliban launching waves of attacks and international and government forces responding with big offensives.

According to government figures, the fighting has forced 15,000 families from their homes in the three southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan, said a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, Nader Farhad.

''We have assistance prepared for up to 15,000 families should it be required,'' Farhad said.

Given average family size, that figure means 80,000 to 90,000 people, he said. But he said the United Nations had not confirmed that total.

''Because of the insecurity, we don't have access to some of these areas, that's one of the reasons we don't have the exact figure,'' he said.

Many of the displaced were living with friends and relatives while some had moved to camps already set up for people displaced by insecurity and drought, he said.

The U.N. was providing some of the displaced with survival kits and food, he said.

The newly displaced join some 116,000 people already uprooted by years of conflict and drought, bringing the number of internally displaced within the area to some 200,000, the UNHCR said.

Afghanistan's NATO force, which takes over security for the whole country on Thursday, says the Taliban have been driven out of some of the areas they infiltrated this year after suffering heavy casualties in offensives.

The force says it now hopes to focus on its mission -- providing sufficient security for the government and aid groups to begin reconstruction and get development going.

Reuters