WFP described the decision taken on safety grounds as a major setback to humanitarian efforts in the country’s breadbasket, where staff had been regularly providing aid to over 800,000 people, including many who had escaped the fighting in Khartoum. The ongoing fighting makes it extremely challenging for humanitarian agencies to...
“Access to sufficient amounts of clean water is a matter of life and death…children in Gaza have barely a drop to drink,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Children and their families are having to use water from unsafe sources that are highly salinated or polluted. Without safe water, many more...
According to the team, Patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor, limited to no pain management is available at the hospital, and the emergency department is so full that workers must take care not to step on patients on the floor. Al-Shifa Hospital, formerly the most important...
Speaking later in the day at UN Headquarters, the deputy head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), confirmed that following a food assessment, around half of all Gazans “are starving”, with no idea where their next meal is coming from. Briefing journalists in Geneva uon his return from Rafah...
This is the first time since 7 October that a resolution on this conflict has been adopted by consensus within the UN system, the UN health agency noted. It underscores the importance of health as a universal priority, in all circumstances, and the role of healthcare and humanitarianism in building...
The region has been under the control of opposition Houthi forces since the internationally recognized Government were driven out of the city in 2015. WFP said that despite negotiating with the authorities for nearly a year to provide a more limited aid programme that would reach around 6.5 million in...
The latest update from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, confirmed rising casualties and devastation amid “heavy Israeli bombardment from air, land and sea”. “From the afternoon of (Saturday) 2 December to the afternoon of (Sunday) 3 December, at least 316 people were killed and at least another 664 injured...
He said the UN was able to step up delivery of basic supplies into and across the Gaza Strip during the week-long pause in fighting, primarily through the Egyptian and Palestinian Red Crescent Societies. This included 630 metric tonnes of flour for 224,000 people in the south, and 63,000 blankets...
“As we drove through Gaza City it was like a ghost town; all the streets were deserted,” said Thomas White, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza. “The impact of heavy airstrikes and shelling was so visible. Roads are riddled with craters, complicating aid deliveries.” Truce deadline looms Wednesday marks the...
Priorities include transporting fuel to the north of the war-torn enclave, so that it can be used to power hospitals, provide clean water and maintain other vital civilian infrastructure. Such services have been massively impacted by weeks of Israeli bombardment in response to Hamas’s 7 October massacres in southern Israel...
That’s the message from UN health agency WHO, which said on Monday that negotiators at the upcoming meeting must recognize their responsibility “for the health of populations worldwide”. “Leaders must deliver in Dubai, providing the strong health outcomes their peoples expect and their economies urgently need,” said WHO chief Tedros...
And as the UN emergency relief coordination office, OCHA, reported that people in the south were queuing for kilometres to obtain cooking gas and resorting to burning window frames and doors for cooking, it added that the four-day humanitarian pause agreed upon by Israel and Hamas has been “largely maintained”. Under...