Truck Crash Kills 22 Afghan Refugees Returning from Pakistan

A terrible truck accident killed at least 22 Afghan refugees on Saturday. The truck was carrying people back to Afghanistan from Pakistan when it crashed on a highway. Ten of the people who died were children. The accident happened in Afghanistan's Laghman province on the main road between two big cities.

The crash happened because the truck driver fell asleep while driving. This caused the truck to go off the road and fall into a ditch. Besides the 22 people who died, at least 36 others were hurt in the accident. The injured people were taken to hospitals in a nearby province for medical care.

These Afghan people were returning home from Pakistan, where they had been living as refugees. Pakistan has been forcing many Afghan refugees to leave their country since 2023. Pakistani leaders say they are doing this because some Afghan people were involved in violent attacks in Pakistan. This has made hundreds of thousands of Afghans return to their home country.

Many of these Afghan families had been living in Pakistan for many years. Some children were even born in Pakistan and had never lived in Afghanistan before. These families originally left Afghanistan because of wars and dangerous conditions in their country. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan again in 2021, even more families moved to Pakistan to stay safe.

This year alone, almost 447,400 Afghan people have returned from Pakistan. The United Nations and other groups that help refugees have counted these numbers. Many aid groups are worried about forcing these people to return to Afghanistan. They say life is very hard there right now, with not enough food, jobs, or safe places to live.

The United Nations has warned that Afghanistan is facing a serious crisis. Millions of people there need help from aid organizations to survive. Many of the people returning from Pakistan arrive with nowhere to live and no way to make money. They often cannot find basic things like clean water or medical care.

This truck crash was not the first deadly accident involving Afghan refugees. Last August, a bus carrying Afghan migrants from Iran crashed in another part of Afghanistan. That accident was even worse, killing 79 people including 19 children. These accidents show how dangerous the journeys can be for people trying to return home.