300,000 Afghans Have Crossed Into Iran Since Taliban Takeover: Aid Group

The aid group said as many as 4,000-5,000 Afghans have been crossing into Iran daily since the Taliban seized Kabul, and it called for more international support for Iran, which is grappling with a deep economic crisis of its own.

As many as 4,000-5,000 Afghans have been crossing into Iran daily since the Taliban seized Kabul in August and hundreds of thousands more are expected to arrive in the coming winter, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Wednesday.

The aid group said as many as 300,000 Afghans have crossed the border since the Taliban takeover and it called for more international support for Iran, which is grappling with a deep economic crisis of its own.

"Iran cannot be expected to host so many Afghans with so little support from the international community," NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland said in a statement. "There must be an immediate scale up of aid both inside Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries like Iran, before the deadly winter cold."

The shocking takeover of the Taliban, as the last US troops were preparing to leave Afghanistan, prompted a mass exodus of officials and others connected with the former Western-backed government and other vulnerable Afghans.