malnutrition

"We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there," says John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director.

Jonathan said in July that his father had been suffering serious convulsions and his mother was "numb" from anaemia and malnutrition.

The ministry says another 435 people have so far died during the war as a result of malnutrition and starvation, including four over the past 24 hours.

Farming families are already selling livestock to supplement lost incomes from wheat, reducing their number of daily meals, and there has been a rise in malnutrition rates among children and pregnant women.

Since UN-backed global food security experts confirmed a famine in Gaza City on 22 August, the ministry has reported that at least 144 people have died from starvation and malnutrition across the territory.