The thermometer dropped as low as -33° Celsius in some parts of Afghanistan. The extreme temperatures are sometimes accompanied by snowfall, while power outages are also frequent.
At least 166 people have died due to the cold wave that has hit Afghanistan in the past twenty days or so, an official of the de facto authorities’ disaster response ministry said on Saturday.
According to Abdul Rahman Zahid, another 88 people have died within a week, bringing the death toll so far to 166, based on data from 24 of the country’s 34 provinces.
He explained that the deaths were due to floods, fires or the release of deadly gases from heating media.
The thermometer dropped as low as -33° Celsius in some parts of Afghanistan. Extreme temperatures are sometimes accompanied by snowfall. Power outages are frequent.
The cold wave is hitting a country where more than half of its 38 million inhabitants are on the brink of starvation and nearly 4 million children are suffering from malnutrition.
About a hundred homes were destroyed or damaged and nearly 80,000 farm animals, a critical resource in desperately poor Afghanistan, were lost.
The World Health Organization announced this week that seventeen people succumbed to “acute respiratory infection” in a village in Badakhshan province (northeast). “Meteorological conditions prevented the arrival of doctors in the area” in time, the WHO explained.
Humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has dropped dramatically since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, amid a chaotic withdrawal of the US military after 20 years of war.
The distribution of humanitarian aid by NGOs has also been called into question after the Taliban’s decision on December 24 to ban women from working for them. Major non-governmental organizations suspended their activities in protest of this decision, which applies to all fields except one, that of health. Thanks to this exemption, some organizations were able to resume their activities.
RES-EMP
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