A truck bringing back Afghan refugees from Pakistan overturned on a highway on Saturday, killing at least 22 people.

The dead included 10 children.

The crash took place in Afghanistan’s Laghman province on the main road linking Kabul with Nangarhar, a spokesperson for provincial governor Abdul Malik Niazai said.

Mr Niazai said the passengers were Afghans returning from Pakistan, where, he added, authorities had intensified a crackdown on undocumented migrants and refugees since 2023.

Aminullah Sharif, the provincial director of public health, said that the truck crashed after the driver fell asleep at the wheel, causing the vehicle to veer off the road and into a ditch.

He said 22 people were killed and at least 36 injured. Survivors were taken to hospitals in neighbouring Nangarhar province for treatment.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have returned from Pakistan since the neighbouring nation launched a deportation campaign targeting undocumented foreigners in October 2023.

Pakistani authorities announced the crackdown after a surge in militant attacks, claiming that Afghan nationals had been involved in a number of them.

The policy has largely affected Afghans who fled war and political instability over the past four decades, including many families who moved to Pakistan after the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.

Since the start of this year alone, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, nearly 447,400 Afghans have returned from Pakistan.

Pakistan’s deportation campaign has drawn criticism from humanitarian groups and refugee advocates. The Afghans forced to return, they say, face worsening humanitarian conditions and economic hardship under the Taliban’s rule. Moreover, many returnees were born in Pakistan or had spent years living and working there.

The UN has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan faces a humanitarian crisis, with millions of people dependent on aid and many returnees arriving with limited access to housing, employment, or basic services.

Saturday’s crash came less than a year after a bus returning Afghan migrants from Iran collided with a truck and a motorcycle in Herat province in August 2025, killing 79 people, including 19 children.