The United States last week issued a license authorizing it and its partners to continue to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, a Treasury Department official told Reuters, after the Taliban, which is blacklisted by Washington, seized control of the country this month.

The specific license, issued by the Treasury Department last Wednesday, authorizes the U.S. government and its contractors to support humanitarian assistance to people in Afghanistan, including the delivery of food and medicine, despite U.S. sanctions on the Taliban.

"This is targeted humanitarian assistance designed to help the people of Afghanistan," the official said, adding the assistance is not going to Taliban authorities.

The United Nations says more than 18 million people - about half of Afghanistan's population - require aid and that half of all Afghan children under the age of 5 already suffer from acute malnutrition amid the second drought in four years.