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Some of that tragic fallout from the renewed violence can be found in Bagrami, in Kabul’s eastern suburbs. People have been coming here from Sangin for the past six months, but conditions are so poor that many long for the war zones they left.

The Bagrami camp is effectively an illegal settlement on public parkland in a middle-class Kabul suburb. There is little local sympathy for the displaced, many in the camp said. Local authorities have objected to proposals to dig a well to provide more water for the 400 families here, and residents complain about the smoke from the fires as the displaced burn whatever they can find for heating and cooking.

After a mild start, the worst of the winter is yet to come. Temperatures can fall to well below freezing, with searing winds off the mountains and snow that turns to filthy ice. Every year scores of people — mainly children and the elderly — die of cold and hunger, though no precise figures exist.

Bebi has been at the camp for six months, she said, after losing her husband and oldest son when they were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between government forces and insurgents. The men had stopped their farm work for a tea break when the firing started. “They were killed before my eyes,” she said.

She rounded up her remaining five children and made the 630-kilometer (390-mile) journey to Kabul in the hope of finding some means of support now that the breadwinners of her family are dead.

“I am so worried about my children,” said Bebi, who like many Afghans goes by one name. “We have no food, no water and even no blankets to keep my children warm.”

The cash-strapped U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs plans to distribute some relief – food, children’s clothing, firewood and plastic sheeting for shelter. But the agency’s deputy head in Afghanistan, Catherine Howard, told people in the camp during a recent visit that there was no money for blankets.

“It is really a struggle to get the money needed,” she said.

(the above is from the Associated Press)