From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: UNICEF: 100, 000 Afghan Children Could Die This Winter [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1201001307 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2001 THE TIMES OF INDIA '100,000 Afghan children could die this winter' ISLAMABAD: As many as 100,000 Afghan children could die this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient quantities over the next six weeks, the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, warned on Monday. UNICEF spokesman Eric Laroche said the organisation needed 36 million dollars to carry out its "bare emergency work" inside the country but so far had only received half that amount. "As many as 100,000 more children will die in Afghanistan this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient quantities in the next six weeks," Laroche told a press conference here. Laroche and other aid workers said that with the onset of winter, heavy snowfalls would cut off many people in remote mountain areas. Laroche said the combination of drought, years of civil unrest and the recent US bombing of the country had made the crisis facing children in Afghanistan one of the worst scenarios possible. "A number of you asked the United Nations over the past week what our worst case scenario would be in this crisis," he told reporters. If you have turned on the television over these past few days, you have seen injured bodies of young children, I ask you all: What could be worse? "Yet this is only the most public face of the suffering of Afghan children. "If you are a child born in Afghanistan today, you are 25 times more likely to die before the age of five than an American or a French or a Saudi Arabian child." Laroche said more than half the children in Afghanistan were already malnourished and 300,000 children died each year from preventable causes inside the country. United Nations spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker also Monday described the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as "the most serious, complex emergency in the world ever." She said six million Afghans had been identified as needing food aid and there were a further 1.5 internally displaced people. Bunker said there was a "six week race against winter" to get humanitarian aid into the country. However all aid agencies have been forced to suspend or severely curtail their operations because of the hostility of the ruling Taliban regime and the danger posed by US air strikes. Bunker said the strikes, which started on October 7 against the Taliban for its refusal to hand over accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, had contributed to the crisis. "The missile strikes make our jobs harder to do," she said. Another factor severely hampering the UN's ability to operate, Bunker said, was increasing lawlessness inside the country, which had seen the offices and property of many non governmental offices ransacked over the past week. ( AFP ) _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
