Growing evidence is emerging of record levels of malnutrition affecting children in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The Public Health Ministry has told the BBC seven hundred children died in the past six months at just one hospital in Jalalabad. The BBC's Yogita Limaye has been to the hospital and we carry her distressing report. Also in the programme: Airstrikes at military facilities in Syria have killed sixteen people - the government in Damascus blames Israel; and the double amputee who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro just two years after her injury. (Photo: Baby Umrah, pictured with her mother Nasreen, died two days later. Credit: BBC Imogen Anderson)
Hello, and welcome to NewsHour.
Live from the BBC World Service in London, I'm Rebecca Kesby.
On the program today, we'll have more on those airstrikes at military facilities in Syria.
And our reporter has been with a ukrainian artillery unit as russian forces advance towards the strategically important city of Pokhrovsky.
The fighting is very intense.
We fire up to 200 rounds a day.
The enemy continues their attacks in small groups, sometimes up to 60 people.
They're trying to break through our defensive lines, so we provide cover to our infantry.
That full report coming up in about 30 minutes.
But we begin today with Afghanistan, which is in the grip of a major food crisis.
And children are the worst affected, with 3.2 million children under the age of five acutely malnourished.
The UN children's agency, UNicef, says around 45% of afghan children are stunted due to nutritional deficits, while the country desperately needs aid.
But since the Taliban took over the country three years ago, there's been a significant drop in international funding for public healthcare and community nutrition programs.
No foreign government recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, not least because of their strict restrictions on the basic human rights of women.
But health workers warn the situation for children is getting a lot worse.
The BBC South Asia correspondent Yogita Lamei has this report now from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan.
It is a difficult listen, and it contains distressing details from the outset.
I'm in the main regional hospital in Jalalabad, which is the capital of Nangarhar province in the east of Afghanistan.
I'm seeing in front of me just a sea of people who are coming in, bringing in their sick children.
And what we've been told is that every day, on an average, about 600 children come here who need to be treated in a hospital.