Afghanistan ? Several hundred Pakistani families have fled to neighboring Afghanistan in recent days to escape the turmoil in their country, officials said Wednesday.

And the Pakistani military has removed a small number of troops from a border post between the two nations to tend to problems elsewhere, said Col. Martin Schweitzer, a U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan.

“Clearly, we’re very interested with what’s going on over there – we’re watching it pretty closely,” Schweitzer told Pentagon reporters.

He said that so far, commanders haven’t seen any significant rise in cross-border activity in his area bordering the lawless tribal region of northwest Pakistan, though 300 or 400 refugee families have crossed into Afghanistan.

“We have not see a significant threat emerging,” Schweitzer said in a joint video press conference from Afghanistan with Arsallah Jamal, the governor of Khost province.

Jamal said the refugees are being housed with Afghan families who were once refugees in Pakistan.