Taleban return 'stolen' aid

Six million people urgently need aid, the WFP says.

Afghanistan's ruling Taleban have handed back a warehouse containing thousands of tonnes of grain seized from the World Food Programme (WFP).

A WFP spokesman in Peshawar in Pakistan told the Associated Press: "We're still checking, but it looks like everything's intact."

If there are serious impediments then we could be looking at a humanitarian catastrophe

Catherine Bertini, WFP

The store in Kabul was taken over on Tuesday night when armed Taleban guerrillas entered the building and told staff to leave.

However aid agencies are warning that time is running out for hundreds of thousands of hungry Afghans, and continuous bombing and instability will only make the humanitarian situation worse.

The BBC's Susannah Price says the medical aid organisation Medicins Sans Frontiers has also reported that several of its supply warehouses in the country have been looted.

The WFP is distributing most aid in Afghanistan

Another WFP warehouse in Kandahar was seized by the Taleban on Tuesday. It is not known whether this too has been handed back.

The warehouses hold a combined total of nearly 7,000 metric tonnes of wheat, more than half of the WFP's supplies in the country.

The supplies have been stockpiled to feed desperate Afghan civilians. Aid agencies estimate that about six million people are relying on aid to feed them through the winter.

Disruption

The incidents are further disruption to the work of the aid agencies, whose mission has already been complicated by US bombing and the deteriorating situation inside Afghanistan.

Air strikes have taken their toll in Kabul

Most of the food coming into the country has come from the WFP, but distribution has been seriously affected and the UN estimates 400,000 people are already facing acute food shortages.

Catherine Bertini, the executive director of the WFP, has warned that further impediments could lead to a "humanitarian catastrophe."

Ms Bertini told a news conference that an estimated 52,000 tonnes of wheat per month is needed to feed those in need and the WFP aimed to step up its aid deliveries.

"In the next ten days we expect to deliver about 16,000 tonnes if all goes well," she said. "If we can sustain this, then we can come fairly close to our monthly goal."

The window for delivering humanitarian relief is closing

Oxfam

The WFP says it will continue will consider using targeted air drops of supplies if its daily road convoys of supplies do not succeed in getting aid to remote areas.

Other aid agencies warn that further complications, particularly in delivering aid to those most in need, are inevitable.

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's UK director, has said that lorry drivers are scared of entering Afghanistan after the US mistakenly bombed a compound belonging to the International Red Cross in Kabul this week.

Oxfam's deputy humanitarian director Nick Roseveare told the BBC that time was running out.

"There is a very small window before the roads are closed by snow and at that time approximately half a million people in desperate need of food to keep them going through the winter will be cut off," he said.

Oxfam says that in recent days the Taleban have also started demanding payments from WFP convoys, and restrictions on aid workers communicating remain in place.

'Compelling reason'

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has dismissed calls for a halt to the bombing to allow a massive delivery of supplies, and says the Taleban are the biggest obstacle to aid.

Aid agencies plan to step up aid deliveries

But Oxfam spokeswoman Helen Palmer told BBC News Online that while "bombing is not the only hold-up to aid, it is a very compelling reason.

"We have 120 staff in Afghanistan, but their hands are effectively tied. WFP aid has run out - the Kabul warehouse is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed," she said.

Tony Blair has a right to make the decision not to halt the bombing ... but we have the right to bring to attention the suffering of people in Afghanistan

Muhammad Imran, Islamic Relief Fund

Muhammad Imran, emergency relief coordinator from the Islamic Relief Fund said that supplies were not reaching people in anything like the quantities needed.

"Aid is getting in, but is not matching the need inside Afghanistan," he told BBC News Online.

"We are mindful of the situation with the onset of winter. If a pause (in the bombing) was achieved, massive supplies could be put in place," he said.

"Tony Blair has a right to make the decision not to halt the bombing, but we have the right to bring to attention the suffering of people in Afghanistan."