23 mln acute hunger cases in Afghanistan: UN

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Hunger haunts Afghanistan, with acute cases increasing from 14 million in July 2021 to 23 million in March 2022, a UN spokesman said on Tuesday.

The United Nations and its partners plan to reach 3.2 million acutely malnourished children through 2,500 treatment sites across all 34 Afghan provinces, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The sites have served 800,000 acutely malnourished children since mid-August, Haq said.

This year, humanitarian partners have supported 8.2 million people with food assistance, including emergency food rations, school meals for children, agricultural supplies for farmers and nutritious foods for nursing mothers and their infants, he said.

Haq said the British, German and Qatari governments plan to host an international pledging conference on March 31 in support of the humanitarian response in Afghanistan.

The 2022 humanitarian response plan for Afghanistan requests 4.4 billion U.S. dollars to reach more than 21 million people. But funding stands at only 13 percent, he said.