Snow, extreme weather threaten 2 million Afghans

Qais Usyan / AFP - Getty Images

A burqa-clad Afghan woman makes her way as snow falls in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Dec. 27.

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images

Internally displaced Afghan women from Helmand province wait to receive winter supplies from the UNHCR at the Charhi Qambar refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul on Dec. 27. Since the 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban, 3.8 million refugees have returned, leaving 1.6 million behind, most born and brought up in Pakistan. In late October, UNHCR boosted incentives for Afghans to return and around 10,000 Afghans went home from Oct. 23 to Nov. 30 -- more than double the number who were repatriated in the same period last year.

Ahmad Jamshid / AP

Afghans warm themselves at their shop in Kabul on Dec. 27. Temperatures dropped to 34 Fahrenheit in Kabul.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says more than 2 million Afghans throughout the country are at risk from extreme weather this winter. Last winter, more than 30 Afghans - most of them children - froze to death, when the country witnessed one of the harshest winters in the past 15 years with record snowfall.

-- European Pressphoto Agency