TERMEZ - The United Nations said on Tuesday it was in a "race against time" to get aid to 120 000 children in Afghanistan threatened with famine, illness and cold.

"We are very concerned about the winter coming," Philippe Heffinck, Central Asia area representative of the United Nations children's fund Unicef, told a news conference in Termez on Uzbekistan's border with Afghanistan. "If we don't assist, 120 000 children will die. It's a race against time."

He estimated there were up to two million vulnerable people in and around the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, captured this month by anti-Taliban forces.

The World Food Programme says there are no fewer than three million needy, undernourished people in northern Afghanistan targeted by aid delivered from ex-Soviet Central Asia to the north.

Heffinck, who coordinates Unicef aid via Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, said his agency was particularly concerned about shortages of food, basic drugs, warm clothes and drinking water.

"There is also the quite daunting task of restarting education for girls interrupted four years ago," he said.

The purist Taliban movement, which has lost most strategic strongholds to the Northern Alliance supported by US air strikes, closed schools for girls in the areas it controlled. - Nampa-Reuters