Agence France Presse

Kabul, February 25:

US-led forces and international agencies stepped up aid efforts today as officials said at least 478 people, perhaps half of them children, had died in Afghanistan’s bitterest winter in a decade.

American Black Hawk helicopters defied freezing conditions to swoop down on isolated villages in the worst affected western province of Ghor yesterday and deliver aid while cargo planes air dropped vital food supplies. At least 214 children were confirmed dead from diseases caused by the icy weather according to Health Minister Amin Fatimie, who added that it was impossible to give a complete toll.

“In Kabul, over the past 24 hours 400 children have arrived in hospitals, 69 of them were hospitalised, and three have died,” Fatimie said. Most disease cases have been respiratory tract infections or whooping cough. In Ghor at least 192 people have died from illness, malnutrition and avalanches, deputy provincial governor Ikramuddin Rezaie said. Ninety of those deaths were children and were also included in the toll given by the health minister. Late last week Afghan officials said that at least 162 other people had been confirmed dead in avalanches, road accidents and collapsing mud-brick houses due to heavy snowfall across the country. The full scale of what aid officials have warned could become a humanitarian crisis is difficult to determine because affected regions are almost completely cut off from the outside world. This isolation has compounded the problem in rural areas.