Fawzia Karimi fled to Kabul from Kunduz, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, where the Taliban have been advancing through neighborhoods. She said government forces didn’t fight when the insurgents overran her district, but were bombing the residential area now that it was in Taliban hands.

“If the government cannot do anything, it should just stop the bombardment and let the Taliban rule,” she said. She left with her five children when an airstrike hit her neighbor’s home. Her 16-year-old son was killed in a crossfire three months ago.

Karimi was among hundreds of people from around the north who were crowded into Kabul’s main downtown park, Shahr-e-Naw. Men, women and children have been sleeping for days outside on the ground in blazing summer heat. A few have blankets to pad the ground or sheets to hang up as curtains for some privacy.

The surge in displaced people has heightened international calls for pressure to stop the Taliban assault. At least 60,000 people, more than half of them children, have fled their homes in Kunduz alone since the weekend, Save the Children said Tuesday. Some moved to calmer parts of Kunduz city, living outside without food, water or medical care, it said.

“Markets have been destroyed and are now mostly closed, leaving families without anywhere to get food,” the group’s country director Christopher Nyamandi said. At least 27 children have been killed around the country in the past three days, the group said.

More than 17,000 people from the north have arrived in Kabul in the past two weeks, staying in parks, with relatives or on the streets, said Tamim Azimi, spokesman for the state ministry for disaster management.

In the Shahr-e-Naw park, almost no government help has come to the families. Some Kabul residents have brought limited amounts of food and water and some supplies. Karimi, whose husband had stayed behind in Kunduz, said she couldn’t get any because the volunteers wouldn’t talk to her, because she was a woman.

“I got here this morning and have had nothing to eat,” she said. “Should I leave my children hungry lying under burning sun?”

Only two toilets serve the 400 people in the park. There are no medical facilities and the displaced can’t afford nearby medical centers, even as some children suffer from diarrhea.

At another park on Kabul’s northern outskirts where some 2,000 displaced were living, Zarmina Takhari, said she had received no government help since arriving three days ago and has had to rely on food from volunteers.

She fled her village, Shahr-e-Kohna in Takhar province after 12 of her relatives where killed, she said. Four of them, including her brother and uncle, were in the police forces and were killed fighting the Taliban. When the insurgents seized the village, they identified their family as linked to the police and came to their house, where they shot eight other male relatives to death.

“We loaded a pickup with dead bodies,” she said. Her husband and other brothers stayed behind to bury the dead. “The Taliban have no mercy,” she said.

Nasir Ahmed, 14, said he witnessed the Taliban whipping a man with a rubber hose after a picture of him posing with an Afghan flag was found on his phone. He said he also saw insurgents hitting women whose head coverings were considered improper.

The teen had to leave his school as violence grew. “I missed the last year of school because of Covid-19 and this year because of war,” he said. “I don’t see any future for myself.”