AFGHANISTAN: International aid agencies moved tents, water, blankets, food and medicines into the northern Afghan town of Nahrin yesterday for the survivors of earthquakes which killed hundreds of people.
As the country observed a day of mourning for victims in Nahrim district, thousands of homeless Afghans faced a fourth night on icy, windswept hills despite the best efforts of aid agencies to find them shelter.
"The aid is here but it is difficult getting it to people," one UN aid official said. "People are fearful of coming back into the town because of aftershocks, so they are staying on open hillsides."
UN officials say a series of earthquakes which began on Monday evening killed at least 800 people and made up to 20,000 families - perhaps 100,000 people - homeless. Further tremors rocked the area on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Aftershocks continued yesterday, bringing down more mud buildings and terrifying already traumatised survivors.
Across the war-ravaged country, flags flew at half mast for the day of mourning declared by interim leader Mr Hamid Karzai, who visited Nahrin on Wednesday and promised the survivors everything would be done to help them.
Aid poured in on helicopters and later by truck after two of three roads blocked by landslides were blasted open.
"We want to go as fast as possible," UN official Ms Stephanie Bunker told Reuters in Nahrin.
Another priority was getting water purification tablets to an area gripped by drought for the past four years.
UN spokesman Mr Manoel de Almeida e Silva told reporters in Kabul: "We have food on site to feed people for the next three months."
Ms Bunker said thousands of tents and blankets had already been distributed and more were on the way to Nahrin, 100 miles north of Kabul.
Some people from outlying villages devastated by the quakes came with donkeys to haul food and blankets back to their shattered homes. Landmines, the legacy of years of civil war, complicated the task.
A UN aerial survey showed an earthquake-shattered area with a 9-mile radius in the foothills of the rugged Hindu Kush mountains. It showed 25 per cent of the houses in that area, which included 42 villages, had collapsed and 50 per cent were seriously damaged.
Meanhwile, Kabul Radio said Afghan and international troops had killed 50 Taliban/al-Qaeda fighters in the eastern Afghanistan province of Paktika.
It said the fighting was in Neka district, 30 miles south of Gardez, where US-led forces fought the biggest ground battle of the Afghan war in March.
Meanwhile a US special operations soldier was killed and another wounded yesterday in an apparent landmine explosion south of Kandahar.
Officials at the Pentagon said the two elite soldiers, among 6,000 US troops in Afghanistan, were on a training exercise when the blast occurred in a remote area at about 8:30 a.m. Afghan time.
A total of 31 US troops have died in combat or accidents in and around Afghanistan.