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[DUSHANBE, 8 August 2006] - More than 14,000 people are living in poor conditions with little or no shelter after two earthquakes jolted southern Tajikistan last month, a senior Tajik emergency official said on Tuesday. Abdurakhim Rajabov, deputy head of the Tajik Emergency Ministry, said that the situation was very difficult. "More than 16,500 people were made homeless and only 2,000 of them - mainly elderly and children - are living in tents. The rest are just trying to cope under makeshift shelters or simply sheets near their collapsed or damaged homes," Rajabov said from the capital, Dushanbe. The 29 July earthquakes, measuring between 5 and 5.5 on the Richter scale, hit Khatlon Province the hardest. They were centred in the Kumsangir District near the border with Afghanistan. Three children were killed and 19 people seriously injured. The ministry said more than 800 homes were completely destroyed and 1,300 damaged. Rajabov said a government commission was investigating the cost of the damage, initially estimated at US $23 million "We are afraid that the actual amount will be much higher. There are two things that we need urgently - tents and construction materials. We need at least 2,000 tents to provide shelter for more than 14,500 [victims] who remain without proper shelter," Rajabov said. However, some aid had already arrived. "Kyrgyzstan is one of the countries that has provided relief assistance to the survivors. They sent 16 trucks of various items including food and construction materials worth over US $150,000," Rajabov said. The Tajik Healthy Ministry and international organisations were sending medicine, chlorine tablets and water filters to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday that sanitation conditions in the area were reported to be poor. Chlorine powder would be needed to clean homes, schools and hospitals. OCHA and the World Health Organization (WHO) had provided emergency health kits for 10,000 people for three months. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) had distributed 5,000 kg of chlorine, 20,000 water purification tablets, 600 jerry cans and hygiene kits, of which 120 were specifically for babies and 400 for adults, and 40 boxes of high protein biscuits. The World Food Programme (WFP) had sent more than 19,000 mt of food - 17,640 to people in the most affected villages. OCHA had released a US $20,000 grant to cover immediate relief needs and was considering shipping aid from its warehouse in Brindisi, Italy. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) had made a US $81,700 donation. Tajikistan is prone to natural disasters. The World Bank estimates that annually the mountainous Central Asian state experiences 50,000 landslides, 5,000 tremors and hundreds of avalanches. They exacerbated poverty and hindered economic progress in a country where more than 60 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. The Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission said natural disasters had killed 2,500 people and affected 5.5 million (almost 10 percent of the total population) in the five Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - in the past decade.