UN airlifts food to Afghanistan

The United Nations World Food Programme has sent its first airlift of food aid to Bamiyan province in central Afghanistan.

UN officials estimate that as many as one-hundred-and-sixty thousand people are facing starvation there.

The first consignment, consisting of wheat and cooking oil, left from Peshawar in Pakistan; more is due to follow.

Bamiyan province is a stronghold of the Shi'ite Hexb-i-Wahdat faction, and is cut off from the rest of the country by instability in the North and a Taleban militia blockade to the South.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service