JALALABAD - As many as 110 residential houses built illegally on government land have been demolished in eastern Nangarhar province, officials said on Thursday. Police demolished the houses in Surkhrod and Momand Dara districts, the Surkhrod district chief, Syed Ali Akbar Sadat, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

Eighty houses, built in a government-owned township in an industrial park in Siah Sang and Sheikh Misri areas, were destroyed over the past two days.

He said they had warned residents in advance about the destruction process. "There has been no reaction so far and the demolition work continued until this afternoon."

The Momand Dara district chief, Noor Agha Kamran, said 30 houses built on 25 acres of government-owned land had been pulled down in the Ghargai area. The land belongs to the Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation Ministry.

A resident of Siah Sang area, Sayamuddin, said the government had announced land plots for poor families in the desert. Due to high prices of private land plots, he built a two-room house on government-owned land and shifted his family there.

"I own a hand-cart in Jalalabad, where I live in a rented house, paying 4,000 afghanis per month," he said.

A few months ago, police demolished a hundred houses built on a thousand acres of government land in the Ghaziabad area of Batikot district.