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Afghanistan: At least 166 dead from the cold wave that hit the country

The death toll from the cold wave that is hitting the is 166 Afghanistan in recent days, according to what an official of the disaster response ministry of the de facto authorities said on Saturday.

According to Abdul Rahman Zahid, another 88 people 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 deaths were due to floods, fires or release of deadly gases from heating media.

The thermometer dropped to -33° Celsius in some areas of Afghanistan. Extreme temperatures are sometimes accompanied by snowfall. Power outages are frequent.

The cold wave hits a country where more than half of the 38 million inhabitants are on the brink of starvation and nearly 4 million children suffer from malnutrition.

Somewhere one hundred houses were destroyed or damaged and nearly 80,000 farm animals, a critical reimg 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). “Weather conditions prevented the arrival of doctors in the area” timely, the WHO clarified.

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.

Source: News Beast

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