The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, expressed concern over the safety of humanitarian workers in Afghanistan yesterday after a US missile killed four Afghans working for a UN-funded mine-disposal group.
Mr Annan said the military raids had also made it more difficult to deliver food and other desperately needed humanitarian relief to millions of Afghan civilians.
"It is complicated. As you know, we already have difficulties getting the trucks and drivers in," he said. "In this situation, not many truck drivers want to go in there."
Relief operations inside Afghanistan have been left to local staff after international aid workers left the country in anticipation of US reprisals.
The UN has estimated that as many as 7.5 million of Afghanistan's 24 million people faced starvation or homelessness when the threat of US raids added to the ill effects of decades of internal conflict and three years of severe drought.
UN officials said bilateral aid and contributions to UN agencies had amounted to $700 million since September 11th.
Mr Annan said the UN had done what it could to protect civilian aid workers and offered his condolences to the families of the four dead.
US ambassador Mr John Negroponte told the Security Council on Monday that the US, with help from Britain, was targeting Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and the al Qaeda.
Mr Negroponte said a US investigation into the September attacks had obtained "clear and compelling information" that the al Qaeda network, supported by the Taliban, "had a central role in the attacks".
He said in carrying out its reprisals, Washington was "committed to minimising civilian casualties and damage to civilian property" and would carry on with efforts to provide humanitarian aid to the Afghan people.
Mr Annan spoke to reporters after attending a closed-door council briefing on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan by UN emergency relief coordinator Mr Kenzo Oshima.
Mr Oshima said the situation was "very, very alarming" as winter approached and the UN was pursuing all possible means to step up its activities.
"We have four to five weeks left before the advent of winter so we really need to accelerate activities and we are trying all means available to us, including - at a later stage perhaps - air drops," Mr Oshima said.
The four Afghans who died worked for a local mine-clearing firm called Afghan Technical Consultants, the largest of the UN-funded groups employing Afghans involved in mine clearance with 1,100 employees.
The four were killed and another four injured when the US missile struck their building in a village two miles east of Kabul.
Mr Martin Barber, head of the UN mine action service, said: "The locations of our office and activities are public knowledge. I understand that information about specific offices has been passed to relevant authorities and that is a continuous and regular activity. I can't say more than that."
The dead have been identified as Safiullah, Naseer Ahmad, Najeebullah and Abdul Saboor.