Health minister- Disease kills 128 children in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Disease fueled by freezing weather has killed 128 Afghan children, and desperate parents are feeding their children opium in a bid to alleviate their suffering, the health minister said Saturday.

The children have died of ailments including pneumonia, measles and whooping cough, Mohammed Amin Fatemi told The Associated Press. He said he had no figures for cold-related deaths among adults.

"Many parents are giving opium to the children in the belief it will stop the coughing," Fatemi said. "Maybe for two or three hours it will sedate them, but it is poison for their bodies and can turn them into addicts."

Hundreds of Afghans reportedly have died since heavy snow and freezing temperatures set in across much of the impoverished nation in late December, highlighting how vulnerable people remain after more than two decades of conflict.

Some have died in accidents and avalanches, while former refugees even in the capital have apparently frozen to death in makeshift camps, exposing a lack of basic necessities despite three years of international aid.

The hardest hit area appears to be the western province of Ghor, deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, where deep snow has cut off scores of villages. The United Nations and the U.S. military were airlifting tons of supplies to more than 100,000 people in the southeastern province of Zabul as well as Ghor.

Fatemi said 62 children had died in Ghor in the past three weeks; 46 had died in Kabul and 20 had died in Badakhshan in the remote northeast.

He said officials were checking reports of cold-related deaths from other provinces and said a statement by Catholic Relief Services, a U.S.-based relief group, that 265 people had died in western Afghanistan was plausible.

Two Afghan helicopters carried three tons of medicine, including antibiotics, and two teams of doctors and nurses to the area, he said. Similar teams had been dispatched to seven other provinces.

CRS said Friday that its staff had reached only 6,000 people in 16 of the 250 villages in Ghor. Up to $200,000 was being funneled through the group to try to aid the population with stoves, fuel, medicine and snow-clearing machinery, it said.

P.M. Jose, the group's chief representative in Kabul, said his staff confirmed about 80 child deaths but feared the total would rise "much higher" as other areas are reached.

Officials reported snow up to 20 feet deep in mountainous areas, a killer in the short-term but a boon for the country's farmers after years of drought, with some claiming the winter is the coldest for decades.

The weather also may have contributed to the Feb. 3 crash of an Afghan airliner, which smashed into a mountain peak in a snowstorm, killings all 104 people on board. Fog and low clouds again prevented helicopters from ferrying recovery teams to the snowbound crash site on Saturday, said Maj. Gen. Mohammed Moeen Faqir of the Afghan army.

Separately, some 4,000 travelers were trapped Saturday along a stretch of mountainous highway in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir as heavy snowfall blocked roads and interrupted power and phone service across much of the region, authorities said.

"A state of high alert has been declared," said Muzaffar Baig, the finance minister of the Indian-controlled part of the territory, which is also claimed by Pakistan. Baig said the government feared shortages of basic supplies such as fuel and food because the highway is the only route to bring goods into the valley.