Hunger is on the march in Afghanistan.
Recent photographs show the struggle for survival in an overcrowded hospital in the Southern Province of Kandahar, as desperately malnourished babies and children lie side by side and doctors race to treat them.
One picture taken Thursday demonstrates an emaciated child wearing a blue necklace writhing and grimace. Lines stretched on its face contrast with skin pulled tight across its ribs and shoulder bones. An adult twists the skin on the child's stomach.
In another of the situations, an infant is seen lying folded out, eyes half closed and a feeding tube running from their nose.
For weeks, humanitarian organizations have been warning of a looming disaster as the Taliban struggles to feed the desperately poor and aid-dependent population.
In earlier this month, UNICEF sounded the alarm saying that at least 1 million children are at risk of losing their lives to severe malnutrition.
And with 14 million people facing severe malnutrition, millions of other children will suffer from acute malnutrition at the end of the year, the organization warned.
And with winter approaching, humanitarian groups say that they face a race against time to help families who lack access to safe water, nutrition and health services.
According to recent surveys done by the World Food Program, the United Nations food assistance branch, 95 percent of households in Afghanistan are not consuming enough food, with parents being forced to eat less and skip meals to feed their children.
As more families struggle to put food on the table, the nutritional health of mothers and their children is getting worse by the day, Herv Ludovic De Lys, UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, said in a statement on Oct. 5.
Children are becoming sicker and their families are less and less able to get them the treatment they need, he said, warning that rapidly spreading outbreaks of measles and acute watery diarrhea will only worsen the situation. Meanwhile, hunger is not the only threat that children face in Afghanistan, with growing fears for the safety of religious and ethnic minorities who say they are facing persecution once again from the Taliban and are also targeted by Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS ) --K.
On Friday a major explosion damaged a Shiite mosque in Kandahar during prayers, killing at least seven people and wounding 13 others, Reuters reported, citing officials and provincial leaders.
A Taliban spokesperson confirmed the explosion to NBC News, but said they could not confirm the number of casualties.
So far, no one is responsible for the explosion. However, ISIS has a history of launching attacks against the Shiite Muslim minority in Jordan.
The Taliban also have a history of persecuting the group, with hundreds of minority Shiite Hazaras forced in recent weeks by militants to leave their homes in Daykundi province.
The incident also comes a week after ISIS-K took responsibility for an explosion that killed dozens of people at a Shiite Mosque in Kunduz.