The World Food Programme (WFP) announced that 15 million people in Afghanistan do not know where their next meal will come from. This figure is equal to one-third of the population of Afghanistan.
On the occasion of World Food Day, the UN agency said that Afghans need urgent support.
On social platform X, WFP wrote, "The Herat Earthquake is yet another disaster on top of an already dire humanitarian crisis.”
World Food Day is marked across the globe on October 16.
Earlier, WFP had warned about the increasing spread of hunger across the country and had requested urgent financial assistance for its operations in Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, on Monday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the lives of more than 43,350 people have been affected by the recent earthquakes in western Afghanistan and they require urgent assistance.
Sources told Afghanistan International that the Taliban released a cleric who has been accused of sexually assaulting and photographing two teenage girls in Takhar province.
According to sources, the cleric, who is a supporter of the group, had been detained temporarily by the Taliban.
Last week, pictures of Mawlawi Fazl Menallah were published, which showed him sexually abusing two teenage girls.
According to sources, one of the teenage girls who the pro-Taliban cleric assaulted and photographed was the daughter of a soldier of the previous Afghan government.
According to local sources, Mawlawi Fazl Menallah was one of the Taliban members during the previous reign of the Taliban government. He does not have an official position in the current Taliban government, but the cleric supports the group.
The published photos show that the cleric took photos and videos of himself with his mobile phone while sexually assaulting the teenage girls.
Following the broadcast of these images and the reactions they provoked in the media and social networks, the Taliban arrested Mullah Fazl Menallah, but he was released three days later.
This dual behaviour of the Taliban group with those accused of moral crimes in Afghanistan has garnered headlines many times.
Last month, the court of this group acquitted Mullah Ahmad Akhund, the appointed director of the group for the Electricity Directorate in Kabul. It was preceded by a video showing Mullah Ahmad sleeping with one of his young bodyguards.
The Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the fourth meeting of the "Consular Affairs Commission" of the group and Iran has been held in Tehran.
According to the Taliban’s statement, Fazl Mohammad Haqqani, the group’s head of the Taliban embassy in Iran, discussed the need to increase the number of diplomats in the country with his Iranian counterparts.
Haqqani also discussed "preventing the kidnapping and smuggling of Afghans, the problems of Afghan immigrants and students, and the process of transferring prisoners to Afghanistan” during the meeting.
The Taliban stated that the two sides decided to establish a bilateral committee to address these issues and make necessary arrangements.
Iran still does not recognise the Taliban government in Afghanistan. However, it was one of the first countries that handed over the Afghan embassy to the group.
Tehran has established close diplomatic and commercial relations with the Taliban for more than two years since the group has taken over Afghanistan in 2021.
The US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West reacted to Friday's explosion at the Shia mosque in Pul-e Khomri city and stressed that the Shia community has suffered far too much from violent extremists.
He wrote on social media platform X, "Deeply saddened that a terrorist attack left many innocent Shia worshippers dead and wounded in Pul-e Khumri.”
Earlier, Rina Amiri, the US Special Representative for Women and Human Rights in Afghanistan, said that the attacks against the Shia community are a threat to the diversity that defines Afghanistan.
The attack on Imam Zaman Mosque in Pul-e Khomri city took place on Friday and ISIS claimed responsibility for it.
The ISIS group said that a suicide bomber of the group killed 50 Shias and wounded dozens of others. However, the Taliban said that only seven people were killed and 15 others were wounded in this attack.
Over the past few years, religious and cultural places and gatherings of Hazaras and Shias have been attacked many times in Afghanistan.
Local sources told the Afghanistan International Pashto that two officers of the Afghan National Army in the previous government of Afghanistan were killed in Dawlat Shah district of Laghman province.
According to these sources, Taliban members killed them for being involved in causing instability in this district.
Sources stressed that the two officers died when they were undergoing torture by Taliban members.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s police chief in Laghman province in a statement said that two former soldiers were killed in clashes with members of the group. In this Taliban statement, they have been accused of destabilising the Dawlat Shah district.
Sources close to the families of the two officers said that they did not cooperate with any armed group and were engaged in farming at their villages after the fall of the previous government.
These sources added that the Taliban refused to hand over the bodies of the two officers to the local elders.
They said that the Taliban members tortured the two soldiers and then hung their bodies in public for people to watch.
The images received by Afghanistan International showcase signs of brutal torture on the bodies of these victims.
In the past few months, the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF), one of the anti-Taliban armed groups, had announced several operations in the Dawlat Shah district.
In a letter, more than 540 Iranian artists, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and civil activists have called for ending the persecution of Afghan immigrants in this country.
They referred to the forces driving violence, hatred, and discrimination in addressing the immigrant issue as the "regressive elements within Iranian society”.
The signatories highlighted the emergence of an anti-immigrant sentiment targeting Afghans residing in Iran, a trend that gained momentum in the final days of summer.
About 10 days ago, a group of Iranian citizens protested against the presence of Afghan immigrants in Eqbaliyeh city of Qazvin province and attacked their houses.
Some media outlets have warned about the "intensification of the anti-Afghan campaign in Iran”.
Some have referred to it as a “security project” rooted in government figures, aimed at shifting responsibility for issues such as poverty, high prices, and inflation away from the government.
According to the signatories of the statement, those who joined the trend tried to identify immigrants as the cause of the livelihood and security problems in the society by "projecting, exaggerating and publishing false information" and sometimes with "racist" behaviours and speeches.
The statement also stressed on the role of Iranian government in the emergence of such a trend as well as in the 40-year-old problems of Afghan immigrants in Iran.
According to the statement, the lack of accurate statistics on the number of immigrants in Iran has become a pretext for providing false information, fake news, and irrational incitement against the Afghan population living in Iran.
According to reports by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Afghans comprise six percent of Iran's population.
The statement emphasised that this population alone cannot be attributed as the cause of high prices, inflation, unemployment, exacerbated environmental issues, security concerns, and the “inefficiency of the government" in addressing the national, economic, livelihood, and security crises within the society.
According to them, Afghan immigrants and refugees in Iran are not the only "consumers" of services and have had the "hardest working conditions with the lowest wages" over the past four decades.
It emphasised that Iran's legal system has created obstacles and challenges for the integration of immigrants in the host society.
After more than 40 years, there are first- and second-generation immigrants in Iran who have not yet obtained citizenship.
The government does not issue birth certificates for children born to an Iranian mother and an Afghan father.
Afghan immigrants are facing many challenges such as legal restrictions in the of ownership of movable and immovable property, opening a bank account, buying a SIM card, and registering their children as students in schools.
As per the statement, the government-imposed restrictions have resulted in missed opportunities, and hindered social and class mobility for immigrants, ultimately leading to their systematic marginalisation, increasing their vulnerability and density on the outskirts of big cities.
Ehteram Boroumand, Rakhshan Banietemad, Shahrnush Parsipur, Leila Hatami, Parviz Parastui, Mohsen Renani, Keyvan Samimi, Jila Baniyaghoob, Maqsood Farastkhah, Aliyeh Motallebzadeh, Mostafa Moeen, Badrulsadat Mofidi, Bita Malakouti, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Sharmin Meymandi Nejad, Zia Nabavi and Marzieh Vafamehr are some of the signatories of the statement.
They sought drafting and approval of up-to-date and efficient laws and prioritising it in immigration policies, so that the destiny of a large number of Afghan immigrants and refugees in Iran is determined.
The signatories of the statement emphasised that 160 years ago, the people of Iran and Afghanistan were members of one nation and “one land”.
“We will not allow power-seekers and opportunists, whose interests are in divisiveness and xenophobia, to dominate the cultural space of our society and lead this peaceful society astray into violence, hatred, and racism,” they stated.