UN emergency airlift to Afghanistan gets underway

The United Nations World Food Programme has begun an emergency airlift to central Afghanistan where the population in the opposition-held Bamiyan province is said to be facing starvation.

Officials said they despatched a plane from Peshawar on a trial flight, carrying storage and handling equipment.

Deliveries of food, mainly wheat, are expected to start tomorrow Wednesday and will be targeted to five remote districts, where UN officials say some one-hundred-and sixty-thousand people are at risk.

Bamiyan province is a stronghold of the Shi'ite Hezb-i-Wahdat faction, which has been virtually cut off from the rest of Afghanistan since May, by instability in the North and a Taleban militia blockade to the South.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service