At least 78 people have died in freezing conditions in Afghanistan in the last nine days, a Taliban official said Thursday, deepening a humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people now living under the control of the radical Islamist group.Shafiullah Rahimi, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Disaster Management, told CNN that along with the loss of human life, more than 77,000 livestock had also frozen to death in recent days.Humanitarian partners are providing heating, money for fuel and warm clothes to families, but the distribution of aid has been severely impacted by the Taliban’s ban on female aid workers, the UNOCHA in Afghanistan said in a tweet.At least half a dozen major foreign aid groups have temporarily suspended their operations in Afghanistan since December, when the Taliban ordered all local and international non-governmental organizations to stop their female employees from coming to work, or risk having their NGO licenses revoked.Some of the UN’s most senior female officials have been meeting Taliban leaders in Kabul to discuss the ban on female aid workers, after the agency had to suspend some of its “time-critical” programs in Afghanistan due to the absence of female aid workers."