KABUL - At least 580 people, many of them children, have died during Afghanistan's harshest winter in a decade, but more are feared dead in remote districts which have been cut off by snowfalls as officials offer conflicting death tolls.
Up to 460 people are thought to have died in the past month and a half in three districts of the worst-affected western Afghanistan's Ghor province, according to officials and relief agencies.
Three hundred people have died in Ghor's Saghar district alone, a local official told AFP after the snowbound area was reached for the first time in weeks by US military Black Hawk helicopters.
"Around 300 people died in the last month and a half," district chief Ali Khan said after American forces dropped supplies from a C-130 Hercules cargo planes.
In neighbouring Tulak district local officials told the US military that 80 people had died. Aid agency Catholic Relief Services also said 80 children had died in 16 villages it visited in Sharak district.
Aid officials have warned of a humanitarian crisis, but authorities struggling to confirm death tolls say the total losses are difficult to determine because the affected regions are almost completely cut off from the outside world.
The central government and provincial authorities have offered wildly conflicting figures and officials in Kabul have repeatedly tried to downplay the more pessimistic estimates.
However, Ghor's deputy governor Ikramuddin Rezaie said earlier that at least 192 people in the province had died from illness, avalanches and malnutrition, 90 of whom were children.
It was unclear if any of the 300 in Saghar were included in the figure, although villagers said the district had been cut off for around 40 days with the exception of a visit by health officials about a fortnight ago.
Afghan Health Minister Amin Fatimie said 214 children had been confirmed dead across the country, including 90 in Ghor. He added that it was impossible to give a complete casualty toll.
"These estimates from provincial officials are unconfirmed and can create panic. No officials have visited the graves or seen exactly how many people have died," he told AFP.
In the northeastern province of Takhar, the governor told AFP that 70 children had died of hypothermia and diseases linked to the cold.
"The districts of Ishkahmesh, Kalafghan and Bangi were worse hit and that is where most of the infant deaths occurred. Many families there were living in tents, and we have sent blankets and clothes," Governor Qazi Mohammad Qadir said.
Doctor Muhibullah Zakrey, a representative of the health office in Takhar said that 27 children had died of disease in Ishkamesh district alone.
"We don't have enough medical help and if more help doesn't come the numbers of dead could rise," he told AFP.
With Afghanistan's infrastructure and health system shattered after 25 years of war, many children and old people are already under-nourished and have little resistance to the cold.
According to health ministry statistics, some 700 children die every day in Afghanistan all year round due to a variety of causes and the country has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
Isolation has compounded the problem in rural areas, some of which have no hospitals for people to take their children to. Residents must rely on poorly stocked local clinics instead.
Catholic Relief Services told AFP last week that they feared up to 1,000 children may have died in the cold snap -- a figure dismissed by the government.
Meanwhile, the World Food Program warned on Thursday that Afghanistan faces potentially catastrophic floods after the snow melts.
02/26/2005 10:54 GMT