ISLAMABAD, Oct 10: The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) plans to resume airlifting of relief supplies from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Pakistan on Thursday.

The Thursday’s flight will carry 10,000 plastic sheets and registration materials to Peshawar, UN officials told newsmen at a regular UNIC press briefing here on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the UN Coordination Office for Afghanistan, Stephanie Bunker, while briefing the newsmen about the situation in Kabul after US airstrikes, said life in Kabul seemed to be normal with shops opened, but less in number, and the local people walking in the streets.

The officials said subsequent flights were planned to bring blankets and other relief items to Pakistan. Thursday’s flight, he added, was the first of the about 10 flights planned over the next two weeks.

The aircraft would shuttle between Copenhagen and, alternately, Peshawar and Quetta — the two key locations in Pakistan where the UNHCR was building up a stock of relief supplies, the UN officials said.

According to the officials, the UNHCR continues to build up stockpiles of relief items in the border areas. More than 3,000 tents from Karachi were dispatched to Peshawar and Quetta on Tuesday.

The shipment brings UNHCR’s stocks in Peshawar to 15,000 tents — enough to house upto 80,000 people. Tents, plastic sheets and blankets are being trucked daily from Peshawar to border-crossing points. In Quetta, there are now some 5,000 tents out of the 30,000 needed to accommodate the first 150,000 refugees.

Bedsides, the officials said, a UNHCR field team had been dispatched to its new base in Nehbandan, Iran, some 400km south of Mashad in the Khorasan province, near the Afghanistan border.

The team on Tuesday accompanied two trucks of relief items sent to Nehbandan to increase the local emergency stockpile there.

A water assessment mission also headed to Nehbandan to evaluate potential camp sites in the areas.

The mission included water engineers from the German organization, THW, accompanied by the UNHCR staff and government officials.

Replying a question regarding the outcome of food and medicines being dropped by aircraft in Afghanistan, the UN officials said, “We don’t know the location where these aircraft are doing work or if this food aid is reaching the needy people.”

The United Nations World Food Programme has planned a major acceleration of its overland deliveries to Afghanistan with food aid convoys scheduled to cross the border into the war and drought-ravaged country from Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, according to a press release, issued by the WFP here on Wednesday.

The convoys will be carrying a total of 3,285 metric tonnes of food aid — enough to feed almost 700,000 Afghans for one week.

The food will raise the total food stocks inside of Afghanistan to over 12,000 tonnes, sufficient for the needs of over 3.4 million people for one week. However, distribution networks have been disrupted and must first be rebuilt.

Some 40 trucks loaded with 1,000 tonnes of food aid are on their way to the Afghan capital of Kabul after departing Peshawar early on Wednesday. —APP