'I've seen a lot of bad things in my time, but this hasn't yet happened, and yet you know this is just round the corner. With his voice cracking, he said: 'And look round at those kids, it was quite. 'She's got no money, she's having to beg for fuel to make a fire and beg for flour, which used to be delivered by the old government before the Taliban came in. He can't pay her now because he's not able to grow the crop that he was growing.
'She used to make money by weeding for a local farmer. 'She's got seven kids, five girls and two boys and they are grindingly poor already. 'And right in a kind of cave just beside them I came across a woman whose name is Fatima and she's a widow. Reporting from Afghanistan, the veteran journalist, who has reported from 120 countries and 30 war zones, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm sitting here looking out at the Bamiyan Statues, the famous Bamiyan Statues, expect of course they are not there because the Taliban blew them away 20 years ago. The report was published by the The World Food Programme (WFP), whose Executive Director David Beasley today called for immediate actions by world leaders in the Mr Simpson's broadcast. It comes as a new report warned that 23 million people in Afghanistan face starvation within months. The 77-year-old foreign correspondent spoke with a quavering voice as he described the plight of an Afghan mother-of-seven facing famine. Veteran BBC reporter John Simpson today broke down in tears on air as he described the looming humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.