More than 1,000 Afghan children may have died of cold-related illnesses in a snow-bound Afghan province in the past two weeks, an international aid agency said on Friday. Survey teams sent to 16 villages in a single district of Ghor province this week recorded an average of five deaths of children under five in each, most in the past two weeks, said Paul Hicks, director of a Relief Services Society in western Afghanistan. He said CRS feared the toll in Shahrak district could be far higher as most of its 250 villages could not be reached because routes were blocked by heavy snow. Two other districts with a similar number of villages were also inaccessible by road, he said. "I'd say several hundred and perhaps more children have died, and perhaps more children will die if they cannot get access to medicines and other relief supplies," Hicks said. "Our fear is that more than 1,000 deaths could be a conservative estimate." Ikramuddin, the deputy governor of Ghor province, said the government had recorded 35 child deaths in Shahrak in the past three days, but numbers could be higher.
