Some 20,000 refugees flee Pakistan for Afghanistan

By Jonathon Burch,

KABUL (Reuters) - Some 20,000 people from Pakistan's northwestern tribal region of Bajaur have fled to Afghanistan this summer due to intense fighting between government forces and militants, the United Nations said on Monday.

The Pakistani military launched an offensive in August for control over the strategically key region of Bajaur and have been involved in heavy fighting since then.

"More than 3,900 families, or around 20,000 individuals, have fled fighting in Bajaur ... into Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan," said the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan.

"In the last two weeks alone, over 600 Pakistani families have fled into Afghanistan," it said.

Bajaur is the smallest of Pakistan's seven so-called tribal agencies, semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun regions along the Afghan border, with a population of one million people.

U.S. officials say Taliban and al Qaeda-linked fighters, financed by drug money, use the tribal regions as an operating base to launch attacks inside Afghanistan, where Western forces are struggling to stem a growing insurgency.

Around 9,000 Pakistani soldiers are deployed in Bajaur and up to 1,000 militants have been killed in clashes this month, according to the Pakistani army.

Several hundred thousand people have fled their homes because of fighting, seeking refuge in other parts of the country or in neighbouring Afghanistan.