Bad Weather Halts Aid Flights to Afghanistan

RUSTAQ, Afghanistan —  Bad weather blocked relief flights to quake-stricken northeastern Afghanistan again Monday, frustrating aid workers who had managed to get only one flight through in four days.

An estimated 30,000 people in the remote mountains of the northeast are cold, hungry and badly in need of shelter and food after a powerful Feb. 4 quake that crumbled villages and killed an estimated 4,500 people.

On Monday, two U.N. planes packed with supplies circled a northeastern airstrip, waiting in vain for a break in the clouds that would let them land. They eventually aborted their mission and returned to Pakistan.

Two Russian-made cargo planes, scheduled to fly into Pakistan to pick up tons of much-needed supplies, also fell victim to the bad weather and were unable to take off from northeastern Afghanistan.

War, snow and fog have combined to make the job of getting help to survivors an enormous one. Helicopters have managed to reach some of the most isolated villages, while aid convoys have taken four to six days to traverse the snow- and mud-clogged road from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

A U.N. relief flight got in on Sunday after workers siphoned off a layer of water that had submerged the runway. It was the first flight in three days.

The United Nations and Red Cross are appealing for $2.5 million to drop supplies in by parachutes.

The aid organizations have collected only $1 million, and no country has come forward with the key item--a cargo helicopter to airdrop supplies, said Rupert Colville, the official from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees coordinating the relief effort.