ALMATY, Kazakhstan — United Nations officials issued an urgent plea on Monday for some $25 million in emergency aid to Tajikistan, the Central Asian country hardest hit by the region’s harshest winter in three decades.As temperatures hover around minus 5 degrees, and snowfall has more than tripled last year’s total, rural communities in the heavily mountainous country have been cut off from food supplies, while cities are enduring drastically reduced electricity and water.
The United Nations reported that 500,000 people in Tajikistan may face food shortages and that at least 260,000 are in need of immediate food assistance.