He said the famine is caused by a drought, which has hit a large area of Afghanistan and affected about 12 million people, half the impoverished country's population. He said a large number of affected families had gathered on Faizabad, provincial capital of Badakhshan, one of the poorest and most isolated regions of mountainous Afghanistan. More than 1,000 people had died in the past three months in badly affected areas of Shari Bozourg, Yaftalha and Ragh districts, Asim added. It is a very serious situation here.
People are in an awful, terrible and tragic condition.
Local authorities and a couple of relief agencies are helping to tackle the disaster but this is insufficient, Asim said. Islamic scholars in the area, responding to repeated reports of dire conditions, issued a decree saying famine victims can eat animals that are normally banned by Islam, Asim said. Livestock have been wiped out, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been forced from their villages and several hundred people have died elsewhere in the country because of the drought, the United Nations said. The United Nations has warned that international aid so far was insufficient to deal with the threat of famine from the worst drought in 30 years that hit the country already ravaged by 21 years of war. Reuters contributed to this report.