By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
July 5, 2019
More than 2,000 families who had left their villages in eastern Afghanistan amid military operations and militant attacks have returned home as the security situation improved, local authorities in the province of Nangarhar say.
Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar, told RFE/RL that the internally displaced people returned to their villages in Bati Kot, Kot, Momand Dara, and Shinwar districts.
“In total, some 14,000 families have expressed willingness to come back to their homes,” Khogyani said late on July 4.
He said fighting in their villages forced the residents to flee to the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and neighboring provinces.
Both the Taliban and a local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group remain active in Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The IS affiliate has carried out a string of suicide bombings and attacks on government offices, police, schools, and aid groups in Jalalabad since it first emerged in Nangarhar in 2015.