Cold winter kills 40 in Afghanistan
More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death in what has been Afghanistan’s coldest winter in years, an Afghan health official said today.
The government has recorded 41 deaths from freezing in three provinces – Kabul, Ghor and Badakhshan, said Health Ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar.
All but three or four of those deaths were children, he said. Twenty-four of the deaths were in the capital of Kabul, mostly in camps for people who have fled fighting elsewhere in the country.
Kabul has been experiencing its worst cold snap and heaviest snowfall in 15 years, according to the National Weather Centre. It said the weather was to improve by the end of the week.
Heavy snowfall in Day Kundi province caused an avalanche late Sunday in the Sang-i-Takht district that damaged three dozen homes and shops.
The hardest-hit have been people living in tents in a number of camps around the capital. The deaths in these camps, so close to the offices of international organisations overseeing billions of pounds in aid to the country, have shocked many in Kabul.
The cold has also caused a rise in the price of gas and wood – the main fuel used by the city’s five million or so residents to heat their homes. Heavy snows also damaged high tension wires coming into the capital, causing sporadic blackouts in large swathes of Kabul. About 75% of the city has electricity.
