As anticipation of a US strike in Afghanistan builds, UN officials admitted Sunday that too few tents and clean water were available yet to meet an emergency along the Iranian border.
"We are not ready if something happens," said Toshiro Odashima, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, a staging post close to the border with Afghanistan.
Odashima told AFP that his agency hoped to stockpile along the 900 kilometer (560-mile) Iranian-Afghan border enough tents, clean water and other relief for up to 80,000 refugees in the initial phase of a crisis.
But he said there was only enough aid to meet 30 percent of the needs of 50,000 people in this northern sector of Iran's Khorassan province, while about the same proportion had arrived for 30,000 people expected during the early phase of an emergency in the southern sector.
"We are trying to fill the gap in the coming week," Odashima said.
Not only is the UNHCR hoping for more flights from Europe arriving at Mashhad airport, it is also counting on obtaining supplies locally in Iran, as well as receiving shipments of tents and other supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi.
Two plane loads of tents, plastic sheetings and other supplies have been sent by the British government to Mashhad with the latest cargo landing early Saturday.
Two engineers working for the UN arrived from Germany on Thursday to search for water and dig wells along border areas near sites where refugee camps might be built.
The United Nations has forecast a worst case scenario of 400,000 refugees surging to the Iranian border in the longer term for fear of US-led military action against Osama bin Laden, who is in hiding in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden is suspected of being behind the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington using hijacked airliners as suicide weapons, which killed more than 5,000 people.
Meanwhile Afghans are still returning to their homeland from Iran under a UN-assisted repatriation scheme.
Some 300 crossed the border at Dogharoun in northeastern Iran Saturday, an AFP photographer reported.
A UNHCR official said the numbers had dropped since September 11 but were still significant.
The Afghans, mainly single men, crossed the border on foot to identify themselves to officials of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime.
The frontier, which Iran has closed to Afghans coming the other way, was reported calm -- MASHHAD, Iran (AFP)
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