The UAE has sent 30 tons of aid to Afghanistan, the Emirates News Agency WAM reported on Friday, following a deadly earthquake that is estimated to have killed 1,150.
The aid reportedly consisted of food supplies and was sent under the directive of the UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to supervise an air bridge for the victims.
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The task was undertaken by the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation and the Emirates Red Crescent, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, WAM reported.
Dr. Mohamed Ayoya, a UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, said his agency has deployed medical experts and hygiene supplies to support surviving families in an account to the Associated Press.
He said that with a damaged water system and an existing outbreak of diarrhea, cholera is a real concern for those left homeless. Ayoya made those comments as an aftershock took more lives on Friday.
Afghanistan's economy had been reliant on international donor support and aid even before the Taliban seized power last August as the US and its NATO allies withdrew their forces, ending a 20-year war.
Aid groups still operating in Afghanistan are now scrambling to get medical supplies, food and tents to the remote quake-struck area, but UN agencies are facing a $3 billion funding shortfall this year.
Trucks of food and other necessities arrived from Pakistan, and planes full of humanitarian aid also landed from Iran and Qatar.
India sent a technical team to the capital, Kabul, to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance. India said its aid would be handed over to a UN agency on the ground and to the Afghan Red Crescent Society.
Other countries that have offered aid were at pains to underscore that they would work only through UN agencies, not with the Taliban, which no government has officially recognized.
Some have called on the Taliban to first address human rights concerns, chief among them the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls.
With the Associated Press
Read more:
Aftershock strikes Afghanistan as earthquake death toll rises to 1,150
UN says Taliban interfering with aid, resisting cash plan
US ‘saddened’ by Afghan earthquake, looks at aid
