You can see, feel, hear the distress in Badakhshan’s Provincial Hospital in Afghanistan.

Warning: This article contains content some readers may find distressing.

The halls are heavy with the sound of crying babies. The rooms, full of malnourished children, many two to a bed. Their frail, fragile bodies expose their wasting bones, with some so weak they’re dependent on oxygen tanks to breathe.

Afghanistan is facing an unprecedented crisis of hunger. More than 4.7 million women and children require urgent treatment for malnutrition, according to the UN. And 90% of children under the age of five are in food poverty.

The hospital team in Badakhshan, in the northeast of the country, are doing all they can to keep the children alive. But increasing numbers are dying.

In the last three months alone, roughly one baby died every three days here. Fifty-three have passed away so far this year – that’s a 50% increase on the same time last year.

Faisal is 12 months old. He’s severely malnourished and has acute diarrhoea too. But like many on this ward, he has other serious complications.

Among these is hydrocephalus, a condition that causes water to gather around his brain. His poor mother is so exhausted, she’s lying on the floor by his bed.

As she sits down to speak with us, she reveals she has already lost three children to malnutrition.

“I am worried about him and what might come next,” she tells me.

“I’ve already lost three of my children. My first daughter died at eight years old. Two more of my children passed away when they were two-and-a-half years old.”

The ward is full of lost-looking eyes, dimmed by hunger.

A horrifying thing to watch

Asma is 13 months old. But she weighs little over nine pounds (4kg) – less than half of what she should.

Doctors fear she might not survive the night. But she’s put on oxygen and by the morning, she thankfully starts to improve.

“I’m really afraid,” her mother Khadijah says as her eyes fill.

“Of course I’m afraid, I’ve cried so much. I’m so thankful to the doctors, they’ve kept my baby alive. I’m so grateful to them,” she says.

But it’s touch and go for her daughter, and there are long periods when her chest fails to rise and fall.

It’s a horrifying thing to watch – imagine as a parent sitting day and night, wondering whether the next breath might be her last.

There is a stream of desperate cases coming through the doors here.

Today, there are 20 babies to just 12 beds. Sometimes, it is even more crowded.

There are suddenly two new arrivals. One of them, little Masouda. Her family travelled 13 hours to get here – spending what little they had left.

She, too, has to be quickly placed on oxygen and she’s painfully thin. Doctors tell us they fear she won’t make it.

The team are doing an incredible job during a hugely demanding time. But they need more staff, more medicine, more equipment.

Hospitals and health clinics across Afghanistan have suffered major funding cuts. The US, which was Afghanistan’s biggest aid donor, this year pulled almost all of its funding to the country. And the Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls have proved a major barrier for many international donors.

It’s having a direct impact on children’s chances of survival.

Daniel Timme, chief of communication at UNICEF, said: “The nutrition situation for children in Afghanistan is very serious and the numbers speak for themselves. Over 3.5 million children under five are acutely malnourished, including 1.4 million suffering life-threatening forms of wasting.

“It must be clear to everyone: when funding drops as we are seeing it now in a context with such high levels of malnutrition, preventable child deaths rise.”

A vital lifeline

In rural areas, poverty is as extreme as the landscape, and help for families with malnourished children is getting harder to reach.

Layaba Health Clinic is a vital lifeline.

The waiting room is full of mothers looking for medical assistance for their babies. Some women here tell us the Taliban’s restrictions on them working and earning money have also played a part, making it harder for them to feed their families.

“They are to blame,” one woman says with surprising candor.

“Every girl had her own dreams. I wanted to be a doctor. I took my responsibility for my children seriously. And I wanted to support my husband too.”

Another woman tells us she earned more than her husband as a teacher, but now finds herself unable to contribute financially.

The Taliban’s response

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, the Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the malnutrition crisis was the product of decades of conflict.

“We have had to start from zero to rebuild and restore our national resources. The Islamic Emirate is making every possible effort to address these challenges.”

Mr Mujahid said his government had a five-year plan to “tackle malnutrition, unemployment, and other pressing social issues”.

In response to the complaints of the women we spoke to, he said that men in the “vast majority” of Afghan families were the breadwinners and claimed the Islamic Emirate had made “significant efforts to promote vocational opportunities for women”.

But under the Taliban, women can no longer train to be doctors, nurses and midwives. And in remote villages, community workers like Harira are often the only lifeline – a project part-funded by UNICEF.

She goes door-to-door carrying baby scales, carrying out check-ups, trying to teach families about what to feed their children and when needed, get them to clinics and hospitals for treatment.

It saved Ramzia’s son’s life.

She had measles when she was pregnant and her son Faisal was very underweight.

“His legs and hands were as small as my fingers. Now he’s much better,” Harira says – beaming as she delights in the weight he has now put on.

“I was afraid I’d lose him,” Ramzia says. “He was so weak. But Harira came here and taught me how to feed him and give him milk when he needed it.”

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Reeling from death, fighting for life

Keeping children alive in this climate is a battle.

Nasrullah and Jamilah, who live on the outskirts of Fayzabad, are holding their two-month-old twins.

But they’re also in the throes of grief – on a journey to the grave of the baby they lost only a month ago. Her name was Shukriya. She was 18 months old.

“She was our child, we loved her. I will never forget her, so long as I’m alive. We really tried, we went to the doctors for check-ups, for ultrasounds, for blood work – we tried our very best. But none of it could save her.”

Both parents say they feared their twins could also face the same fate. Shukriya’s grave is covered with one of her babygrows. It is haunting to see. And there are other little graves next to hers.

Deaths aren’t documented in a lot of these communities. But locals tell us more and more children are dying because of malnutrition. A silent, searing loss that is spreading.

Talks aimed at starting the process of releasing Israeli hostages look set to begin on Monday.

Egypt has agreed to host delegations from Israel and Hamas tomorrow. An Israeli delegation led by Strategic
Affairs Minister Ron Dermer will attend the indirect negotiations in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

US envoy Steve Witkoff is also expected to join.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he hopes to announce the release of hostages being held in Gaza “in the coming days” and Hamas announced on Friday it would return all remaining hostages in Gaza, dead and alive.

The group also said in a statement that it wants to engage in negotiations to discuss further points in the US president’s peace plan.

Speaking to our US partner network NBC, Donald Trump‘s Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Hamas had also agreed “in principle” to what happens after the war in Gaza is over, but he warned the second phase of the deal, which concerns Hamas’s disarmament and demobilisation, was “not going to be easy”.

“We’ll know very quickly whether Hamas is serious or not by how these technical talks go in terms of the logistics,” Mr Rubio added.

On his way to a US Navy event on Sunday, Mr Trump told journalists he was looking forward to “peace in the Middle East for the first time in about 3,000 years”.

He said the peace plan was “a great deal for Israel” and that “people are very happy about it”.

Progress in the discussions in Cairo will largely depend on whether the militant group agrees to Washington’s withdrawal map, a Palestinian official close to the talks told Reuters.

Mr Trump released a map showing the areas of Gaza the Israeli Defence Forces would need to withdraw its troops from, which he said had been agreed to already by Israel.

Currently, the Israeli military has covered around 80% of the enclave in what it calls a “dangerous combat zone”.

If the peace plan follows the boundaries shown on the map, Israel’s initial withdrawal would leave Gaza about 55% occupied, while the second withdrawal would leave it about 40% occupied.

After the final withdrawal phase, which would create a “security buffer zone”, about 15% of Gaza would be occupied by the Israeli military.

It is this part – as well as the peace plan proposal for an international group to manage Gaza – “that is going to be a little tougher to work through,” Mr Rubio added.

Calls for ceasefire

Meanwhile, international support for an immediate ceasefire is growing.

On Friday, Mr Trump told Israel to “stop bombing Gaza”, and on Sunday Pope Leo renewed calls for a permanent ceasefire in the nearly two-year conflict.

This was followed by the foreign ministers of eight Muslim-majority countries issuing a joint statement urging steps toward a possible end to fighting.

In backing Hamas’ willingness to hand over the running of Gaza to a transitional committee, the ministers called for an “immediate launch of negotiations to agree on mechanisms to implement the proposal”.

They also underlined their commitment to the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, unifying Gaza and the West Bank, and reaching an agreement on security leading to a “full Israeli withdrawal” from Gaza.

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Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian told journalists: “While certain bombings have actually stopped inside of the Gaza Strip, there’s no ceasefire in place at this point in time.”

She said Mr Netanyahu is in “regular contact” with Mr Trump and that the prime minister has stressed talks in Egypt “will be confined to a few days maximum, with no tolerance for manoeuvres that will delay talks by Hamas”.

Residents and local hospitals said strikes continued across the Gaza Strip over the weekend.

At least eight people were killed on Sunday in multiple strikes in the city, according to the Shifa hospital, which received the casualties.

Half of them were killed in a strike that hit a group of people in Gaza City, the hospital said.

Four people also were killed in a shooting near an aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, according to Nasser hospital.

The Israeli military said it was not involved in the shooting and did not immediately comment on the strikes.

“We’re on the brink, and we don’t know whether one will die of a strike or starvation,” said Mahmoud Hashem, a Palestinian father of five, who is forced to shelter in a tent in the center of Gaza City.

When will hostages be freed?

A lawyer representing the families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza has told Sky News now feels “as good a chance as any” to finally get the remaining captives out.

Adam Wagner said hostage families were facing “a huge mix of emotions” as they awaited the latest developments in Mr Trump’s 20-point peace plan.

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“We’ve seen hopes raised and the talks fail a number of times, but this seems as good a chance as any to get those 48 remaining hostages out,” he said.

Wagner also agreed the “big question” for the talks was whether Hamas would agree to full disarmament and complete removal from the administration of Gaza.

Israel estimates 48 hostages remain in Gaza, 20 of whom are alive.

Watch Yalda Hakim’s The World at 9pm on Sky News.

It is a breathtaking and, at points, pretty perilous journey through the remote mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan.

We’re trying to reach the Mazar Dara valley, where an earthquake wiped out whole villages. The force of the quake ripped apart roads, cut off communities and buried multiple generations.

It’s slow going – navigating around sheer drops on a road scattered with rocks and boulders. But after three hours, we start to see the first signs of the disaster that, within minutes, plunged this region into darkness.

We are driving into Wadir, a village in Nurgal District, where everyone we meet has lost someone. The earthquake, which struck around midnight, killed many in their sleep here, especially women and children.

Standing by a makeshift graveyard peppered with white flags and gravestones, we meet little Rahmanullah. He’s eight but looks much younger, and his glassy eyes look heavy with grief.

His fragile, tiny hands point to the grave where his six-year-old brother Abouzar is buried. He was sleeping alongside him.

The only reason Rahmanullah survived was because his older sibling, Saied Rahman, was able to pull him out.

“I was asleep when I heard a crash,” Rahmanullah tells me. “My brother said ‘it’s an earthquake, get up, or the building will fall on you’.

“He took my hand and pulled me out, put me on some wood, and said, ‘get out quick’.”

Rahmanullah takes us up a steep hill to show us what remains of his home.

On the edge of a vast drop, it is now a mound of rubble – only a broken bed and shoes left behind.

The earthquake killed some 2,000 people and was one of the worst Afghanistan has seen. And it came at an already desperate time for Afghans – with an economic crisis, rising unemployment, drought and malnutrition.

In Afghanistan, there has been a seemingly endless cycle of hunger and displacement. Compounding those problems since the Taliban took control in 2021, aid has dropped off a cliff.

This year, the US cut almost all of its funding to the country, and it’s had a massive impact.

The demise of the US Agency for International Development this year has forced the closure of 400 health facilities and left hundreds of thousands of Afghans without consistent access to food.

Nearly everyone we spoke to in this region praised the speed and effectiveness of the Taliban response – the government sending in helicopters to evacuate the injured and the dead.

White tents have sprouted up next to each affected village too – a sign international aid was able to get to these far-flung communities against the odds.

But winter is coming, and sickness is starting to spread. In Andarlackhak, we meet Ajeebah. She’s keen to speak to us in private, in the tent she now calls home.

She married at 10 years old and went on to have 10 children. But five of them died in the quake – three-year-old Shabhana, seven-year-old Wali Khan, nine-year-old twins Razimah and Nasreen, and 13-year-old Saleha.

Their mother is clearly still processing the immense, almost unimaginable loss.

“I don’t want to bury them. What could I do?” she says. “I can’t keep them outside. But I don’t want to put them in a graveyard.”

Outside, dozens of children are playing, many orphaned by the disaster.

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Malnutrition is a major issue in Afghanistan and keeping these children fed will be an overwhelming burden in the months ahead.

With women unable to work under the Taliban and a struggling economy, families were already in dire straits.

Mohammad Salem, who’s 45, has injured his foot. And he’s deeply worried about the months ahead.

“We don’t have anything for winter,” he said. “The snow is coming, and our children are living in tents.

“They’re lying in the dirt. We don’t have any shelter for the future. Everything we had is destroyed.”

The Taliban forbids physical contact between men and women who are not family members, even in emergencies. That raised fears some women would be left without help.

However, the villagers we spoke to praised the rescue efforts and said female aid workers were able to reach them.

But what hangs over every community in these deep and now scarred valleys is the fear of the hardships to come and the realisation that their communities, their families, have been changed forever.