U.N. pulls out

last updated 8 January 2015

Kandahar, Afghanistan

The U.N. refugee agency closed its refugee centers in southern and eastern Afghanistan this week, after one of its employees was killed. Two Taliban supporters, later captured, shot French aid worker Bettina Goislard while she was shopping in a village bazaar. The killing followed several bomb attacks on U.N. offices in Afghanistan. The refugee-center closings will affect tens of thousands of Afghans. Some 2.5 million refugees who fled the brutal Taliban regime in the 1990s have returned to the country since the regime fell in late 2001, and the newest arrivals still don’t have homes. U.N. mission chief Filippo Grandi called on the international community to help provide security in the Afghan countryside. “We cannot do this alone,” Grandi said. “This murder tragically proved it.”