Cholera epidemic kills 45 in single day in Afghanistan

45 people, many of them children, died of cholera in northern Afghanistan in a single day last week.

An opposition spokesman says the epidemic swept through Agkupruk in the Balkh province.

Opposition and Taliban troops are currently battling for control of the area.

Mohammed Ashraf Nadeem, a spokesman for former defence chief Ahmed Shah Massood, who leads the opposition, said: "They all died within 24 hours. No one could help them. We have no clinics, no hospitals, no doctors."

Their symptoms were diarrhoea, vomiting and fever. Afghanistan sees outbreaks of cholera every year.

The World Health Organisation and UNICEF are struggling to assess the extent of the epidemic, UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker says.

Fighting between the Taliban, who rule most of Afghanistan, and the opposition alliance, is concentrated in the north, making access to some parts of the region impossible.

But international aid agencies have sent medicine and supplies to the region.

Destroyed by more than two decades of war, Afghanistan also faces one of its worst droughts in 30 years.

Much of the annual crop has been destroyed, food shortages are rampant and tens of thousands of people are in danger of starving, say UN officials.