UNICEF says 100,000 children could die in Afghanistan without adequate supplies

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran – As many as 100,000 Afghan children could die of cold, disease and hunger within weeks if vital aid doesn't reach them, the U.N. Children's Fund said Monday.

"Winter is approaching fast and we need to move in emergency supplies even quicker in order to help the most vulnerable, the Afghan children and women, to survive these very cold conditions," said Thomas McDermott, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

In a report issued to journalists in Tehran, UNICEF estimated that up to 100,000 children in refugee camps and cities inside Afghanistan could die if essential relief supplies are not made available to them in the next few weeks.

Diseases spreading through refugee camps in western Afghanistan, near Iran, have claimed the lives of hundreds of children in the past few weeks, the organization said.

McDermott, who is overseeing UNICEF's Iran-based emergency operations in Afghanistan, said the organization's priorities there are to conduct an "immunization program to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases, reactivate social services and getting Afghan children back to school."

McDermott said a plane carrying 33 tons of relief supplies for Afghan children landed Sunday in Mashhad, near the border in Iran. Her said the supplies – including therapeutic milk, sweaters, boots and mattresses – would be trucked to Herat in western Afghanistan on Tuesday.

Since the United States began bombing Afghanistan Oct. 7 in an effort to root out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and oust the Taliban from power, UNICEF has sent three convoys with 88 tons of relief supplies to Herat, McDermott said.

But he said delivering aid has been a major problem for staff of UNICEF and other groups because many drivers have been reluctant to travel on mountainous, icy Afghanistan roads and fear they will encounter retreating Taliban forces.

The Taliban held about 95 percent of Afghanistan before the U.S. attacks begin, but they have lost almost all of it this month to the northern alliance and other opponents.

UNICEF offices in the capital, Kabul, and the main northern city, Mazar-e-Sharif, have restored regular operations, and international staff will return to Herat after security checks, McDermott said. Offices in Jalalabad and Taliban-held Kandahar, in the south, remain closed.

In New York on Monday, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said U.N. missions scheduled to leave for Mazar-e-Sharif from Termez in Uzbekistan over the weekend were postponed because of "the prevailing insecurity in the north."

Eckhard also said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees expressed its "extreme concern" about the plight of thousands of civilians in southern Afghanistan following renewed fighting there.

Before the U.S. attacks, Afghanistan was already suffering from decades of devastating war and years of drought that drove million from their homes, and the Taliban had made it increasingly difficult for international aid groups to operate there.

APNP-11-26-01 1433CST