KABUL, 20 March 2022, (TON): An official with the UN food agency warned that the ripples of Russia-Ukraine conflict will further increase food and fuel prices in the desperately poor Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, Afghanistan has been sinking deeper into poverty and economic crisis.

As many as 95% of the country’s 38 million people don’t have enough to eat or money to buy the food. Shelley Thakral, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said “food prices in Afghanistan rose nearly 40% over the last eight months.”

Thakral added “the WFP has spent $1 billion feeding millions of Afghans this year but needs another $1.6 billion.”

Thakral said “the worrying thing, I think and this includes Afghanistan as well as all the other hunger spots across the world, is the rise in food and fuel prices.”

So far, donor countries have not sidelined Afghanistan but she said they “have to dig deeper” as Europe deals with the shockwaves of the war and the 3.2 million refugees who have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion Feb. 24.