UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived on Wednesday in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on a surprise visit.
“Just landed in Kabul for talks with government and people.
“The UN stands with Afghanistan at a time of violence and suffering,’’ Guterres said on Twitter.
The secretary-general’s visit came after a series of bombings in Kabul that have killed an estimated 180 Afghans since the beginning of June.
Over 600 others have been wounded.
In the worst of the attacks, on May 31, a truck bomb reportedly targeting the German embassy killed more than 150 people, mostly Afghan civilians, and wounded another 460.
Across the country, the war with the Islamist Taliban movement continues, fuelling a triple migration crisis, a topic in which Guterres, who for years headed the UN’s refugee portfolio, is interested.
An estimated 250,000 Afghans left the country for Europe last year alone.
Internal migration also is on the rise, with almost 800,000 Afghans having been internally displaced due to the ongoing conflict since the beginning of 2016.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have left neighbouring Pakistan, returning to war-torn Afghanistan as relations between the two countries grew tense.
