JALOZAI REFUGEE CAMP, Pakistan (AP) – Clutching her shivering daughter beneath her tattered burqa, Athar Bibi waited Tuesday for the United Nations to move them from the squalor of Jalozai refugee camp. Six-year-old Khalidja is the only one of Bibi’s three children to have survived the bitter conditions in the camp, where grimy plastic sheets strung over wooden poles provide the only protection against freezing temperatures for some 18,000 Afghan refugees who have streamed across the border in recent weeks. More than a dozen refugees, mostly children, have died, among them Bibi’s 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. “They were coughing and cold and weak. I couldn’t do anything. I tried, we all tried but they died,” Bibi said in a voice barely audible beneath the all-enveloping burqa that covered her from head-to-toe.

As her mother spoke, Khalidja peeked out from beneath the burqa, her brown hear matted with dirt, her white plastic sandals turned mud brown like her stockingless feet. “At night I just cry,” the little girl whispered. “I sleep against my mother and try to get warm. I’m always shaking because I am cold.”

Pakistani authorities and relief agencies have been overwhelmed by the latest influx of refugees to flee fighting in Afghanistan between the ruling Taliban and supporters of ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani. Pakistan, a poor country of 140 million, closed its borders in November, but hundreds of Afghans slip through daily. “This is the beginning of a major crisis. The situation is getting worse every day. Tens of thousands of Afghans are on the move and most of them are heading toward Pakistan,” said Mohammed Dar, emergency coordinator of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in northwestern Pakistan. On Tuesday, the UNHCR began moving the refugees from the desperate conditions in Jalozai to nearby Shamshatoo camp, where tents are being erected and the World Food program is preparing to supply food.

But the need is enormous and resources few, Dar said. “We have no money ... for all these people. There is no money coming from the donors, either, because they are not aware of the depth of the crisis or they are indifferent,” he said. “Children are dying daily of things that can be prevented. When I came here on Saturday, I was given a dead child. This shouldn’t be happening. Antibiotics could save these children.” Shah Lela, a refugee wrapped in a woolen blanket, displayed a slip of paper – the death certificate for his 4-month-old son, Sherazi. It said the child died of dysentery and dehydration.

Dr. Khan Yulis Babri said he treated 400 women and children on Monday in his stained yellow tent. Most needed antibiotics and eventually the medicine ran out. On Tuesday, dozens of women in burqas squatted on the frosty ground waiting to see the doctor. “We have very little. Mostly it is children we are treating. The worst off are the very young, less than 16 months old,” Babri said.

Some 30,000 Afghan refugees are already living in Shamshatoo camp since arriving in Pakistan since early November. According to U.N. officials, a total of 60,000 Afghans have converged on Pakistan since September, fleeing the civil war, as well as extreme poverty and food shortages caused by the worst drought in 30 years. The devastating drought has wiped out as much as 85 percent of the livestock in Afghanistan, ravaged  crops and launched millions on the move in search of food. Inside Afghanistan, as many as 1 million Afghans face severe malnutrition by the end of the bitter winter, according to the World Food Program, which, along with the U.N. refugee agency, has set up six camps in western Afghanistan for an estimated 100,000 people who have fled their homes. In Pakistan, where the United Nations is providing only emergency relief, there already are 1.2 million Afghans living in refugee camps in the northwest and southwest. Another 1 million Afghans are scattered in cities and towns throughout Pakistan.

The first influx of refugees began in 1979 with the invasion by the former Soviet Union. At its peak, 5 million Afghans were living in Pakistan and another 2 million in Iran. The protracted civil war that followed the end of communist rule in Afghanistan has left Pakistan with the world’ largest refugee population. “The issue for us is to get to people on time,” said Dar. “The people who arrive here are among the worst off. Thousands disappear once they cross the border to live with family and friends. Those who are here have absolutely nothing.”