Feature: Snowfall, chilly weather add to suffering of displaced Afghan families

The chilly weather and snowfall in winter usually add to war-weary Afghans who often suffer in spring and summer when fighting gets momentum in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan.

"To be frank, we have no life, neither in the freezing winter nor in the hot summer. We have been fed up with such boring living conditions and even some of us prefer to die," lamented Ghubar, 38, in talks with Xinhua recently.

Ghubar, who like many Afghans goes by one name, lives under a tattered tent in a makeshift camp in Chaman-e-Babrak area, a suburban in northern edge of Kabul city.

He bewailed that he has been living here under a tent over the past 10 years to escape the war and survive but the government has paid little attention to improving their living conditions.

Ghubar, head of a seven-member family, said that he escaped the war in home district Batikot in the eastern Nangarhar province 10 years ago and shifted to the capital city Kabul with the hope to find a better life.

"Winter or summer makes no difference for us," whispered Ghubar, "The snowfall and chilly climate in winter makes us sick and our children usually suffer from respiratory diseases; while in summer different kinds of flies including mosquitoes and even malaria bring variety of illness to us including to our children."

Asked about his income, Ghubar murmured that he works in fruit market and can earn on average 300 afghanis (around 4.5 U.S. dollars) a day. That money is "too little to properly support" the seven-member family, especially if someone gets ill.

Some 750 internally displaced families have been living in the kind of makeshift camps as Ghubar, head of the camp Ziaullah, 35, said.

"Each family here in the camp on average has five children with the majority of them at school age but we have no school here for our children," he said.

More than 1 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), a bitter outcome of the protracted war, have been living in Afghanistan with thousands of them in the capital city Kabul.

The snowfall and freezing weather have claimed more than 150 lives including around a dozen children in Kabul, mostly from poor families over the past couple of weeks, officials said.

"We need shelter, we need school, we need health clinics and we want the government to pay attention to our problems and find amicable solutions to end our miseries," Ziahullah said. Endit