Afghanistan facing food crisis, warns UN

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that millions of Afghans will face starvation this winter if urgent action is not taken. WFP has warned that more than half the population, which is about 22.8 million people, face acute food insecurity, while 3.2 million children under five could suffer acute malnutrition.

Ever since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, it has been struggling to bring stability to the country. David Beasley, the executive director of the WFP was quoted by the BBC as saying, "Afghanistan is now among the world's worst humanitarian crises, if not the worst."

"We are on a countdown to catastrophe."

There have been reports of many Afghans selling their possessions to buy food. The new Taliban administration has been blocked from accessing overseas assets. 

Also read | Eight children die of starvation in Kabul as Taliban fails to stabilise country

QU Dongyu, the director of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said, "It is urgent that we act efficiently and effectively to speed up and scale up our delivery in Afghanistan before winter cuts off a large part of the country, with millions of people - including farmers, women, young children and the elderly - going hungry in the freezing winter."

Meanwhile, The deceased children were orphans and had been struggling to find employment and earn their daily bread since the Taliban took control of the country in August.

Mohammad Ali Bamiani, a religious scholar and orator at one of the mosques in western Kabul buried these children. He reported that these eight children, four boys and four girls, had been given some bread to eat earlier by neighbours. However, needless to say, a little portion of bread was not enough to keep eight children in good health and alive.

"When the landlord wanted to invite the children for morning tea, he saw that they were all dead," he said, quoting the homeowner.  eight children lost their lives to starvation in western Kabul. The children lived in the town of Etefaq, in the 13th district of Kabul, in the Barchi plain.