724 Aid Trucks Enter Afghanistan from Pakistan, UN Says
The United Nations has said that 724 trucks carrying international humanitarian aid entered Afghanistan via Pakistan, as shipments arrived amid a food crisis and disruption to aid routes into the country.
Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan, told AFP that the aid includes food supplies and essential humanitarian equipment. According to the UN, the shipments were sent to families most in need.
Muhammad Yahya, the UN resident coordinator in Pakistan, also wrote on the social media platform X that the 724 trucks had reached needy families. He thanked Islamabad and those who worked to keep open what he described as a “vital humanitarian corridor.”
The arrival of the aid comes as Afghanistan continues to face a severe food crisis and malnutrition. The World Food Programme warned in early August that acute child malnutrition in Afghanistan had reached a critical level this year.
According to the agency, after last year’s deadly earthquakes, several climate disasters this year, and the return of millions of Afghans from Iran and Pakistan since 2023, nearly 14 million of Afghanistan’s 40 million people are facing acute hunger.
The aid has also arrived as the nearly closed land border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has made it difficult to move relief shipments. The crossing has been largely shut since early October last year, following border tensions between the Taliban administration and Pakistan.
Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, told AFP in May that the closure of the Pakistan border had severely disrupted logistical routes for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. He said the situation had made it difficult to deliver essential assistance to those in need.
One example of this disruption was the delivery of fortified biscuits for Afghan schoolchildren, which was supposed to enter the country from Pakistan. But because the border was closed, the shipment route was changed and, after further disruptions, it eventually reached Afghanistan several months later via a long land and sea route, including Jordan, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
OCHA is the UN body coordinating emergency aid and, in Afghanistan, oversees part of the process of organising and delivering humanitarian assistance. Afghanistan is among the countries that in recent years have remained heavily dependent on foreign aid because of economic crisis, natural disasters and large-scale population displacement.
