February 12, 2008	Tuesday	Safar 04 ,1429

HERAT: Several men lay side by side in hospital beds, the stubs of their amputated arms and legs wrapped in fresh bandages. They are not victims of war or land mines, but of frostbite.

It’s the coldest this impoverished, war-ravaged nation has been in at least a decade — that’s as far back as Afghanistan’s weather records go — and so far, the harsh weather has been blamed for more than 650 deaths.

The hospital in Herat has taken in more than 90 patients suffering from problems related to the winter weather, many of them shepherds. Several of the amputee patients were tending their sheep and goats when a blizzard shrouded the western province in blinding snow and left them stranded.

“I was surrounded by snow for two days, and I couldn’t find my way back,” said Ahmad Sadiq, 18, whose uncle died in the storm. One of his feet was amputated, and the doctors decided that the other will have to go, too.

“I don’t want to live like this. I can’t walk anymore. It’s better to die than to live like this,” he said.

A spate of warmer weather in recent days hasn’t slowed patient traffic at the hospital.

Temperatures this winter have plummeted to a low of minus 30 degrees Celsius. The more mountainous regions have seen up to 70 inches of snow, said Abdul Qadir Qadir, head of the meteorology department.

Aid organisations and foreign troops have passed out several tons of clothing, blankets, food and fuel in provinces throughout the country and in villages.

Along with the human lives the winter has claimed, more than 100,000 sheep and goats have died in the largely agricultural country, according to Abdul Matin Edrak, head of the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Commission.—AP