Extreme Winter Has Tibetans On Edge Of Starvation; Aid Group Seeks $1 Million

Some 80,000 Tibetan nomads are in danger of starving and freezing to death in one of the harshest winters on record in the rugged high country along the Chinese frontier, a relief organization says.

Belgium-based Doctors Without Borders said an estimated 700,000 sheep and yaks - principal food sources for the tribal herders - have perished. The cold is so extreme that medicines in clinics are frozen and unusable.

Some accounts have described the winter in the remote border region adjoining the Himalayas as among the century’s worst, with furious storms, deep snows and temperatures plunging at times to 52 degrees below zero.

Although the known death toll is 54, all in China’s Sichuan province, the prospect of 80,000 dead “is not an exaggeration,” said Serge Depotter, field coordinator of Doctors Without Borders.

He spoke by telephone from Xining province, the staging center for a relief effort that includes sending in supplies on horseback.

After cold and blizzards began last November, thousands of nomads fed most of their supplies of barley, a staple food, to the livestock - which then perished anyway.

Doctors Without Borders said nearly 30,000 people are suffering from frostbite or snow blindness, and Depotter said many are ill with intestinal infections from eating bad meat.

In a statement issued in New York, Doctors Without Borders said it needs to raise more than $1 million worldwide to provide immediate help for the Tibetan herders.

At least five Chinese air force supply drops and several truck convoys have delivered barley, blankets, fuel oil and medical kits.