In a crackdown against illegal settlers, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) police have arrested over 2,000 Afghan refugees in Peshawar on Tuesday (today).
The KP provincial government had set June 30 as a deadline for Afghan immigrants to get themselves registered in Pakistan.
According to the KP police, search operations are underway and over 2,000 illegal Afghan refugees have been arrested so far.
Around 950 illegal Afghan immigrants were arrested from Cantonment area.
While 350 from Peshawar city and 700 Afghans have been arrested from the city’s rural areas, police said.
Moreover, at least 400 Afghan settlers have been deported to Afghanistan, police said.
KP government spokesman Mushtaq Ghani said the province cannot bear the economic burden of Afghan refugees anymore.
“We cannot bear the load of more than three million Afghanis in the province,” he told on Tuesday.
Ghani said if federal government wished to extend the stay of Afghan settlers then it needs to establish refugee camps and shift the immigrants from KP to Punjab.
