(13 Nov 2019) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4239616 Yousuf fled with his family from his home in eastern Afghanistan eight years ago to escape the war, but he couldn't escape tragedy. In the capital, Kabul, five of his children died, not from violence or bombings, but from air pollution, worsened by bitter cold and poverty.
At the camp for displaced people they live in, they and other families keep warm and cook by burning the garbage that surrounds them. One by one over the years, each of the children got chest infections and other maladies from the pollution and never made it to age seven, he told The Associated Press. The 60-year-old has nine surviving children.
Afghanistan's authorities are trying to tackle pollution in the country's capital, which may be even deadlier than the 18-year-old war.
There are no official statistics on how many Afghans die of pollution-related illnesses, but the research group State of Global Air said more than 26,000 deaths could be attributed to air pollution in 2017, compared to 3,483 civilians killed that year in the Afghan war.
Most days a layer of smog covers Kabul, a city of some 6 million, and it gets worse in the winter, when people burn coal, garbage, plastic and rubber to heat their homes in the bitter cold.
Decades of war have wrecked the city's infrastructure and caused waves of displaced people. Their camps are surrounded by garbage dumps, with no proper water or sanitation system.
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