“Civilians must be respected and protected at all times” and the UN chief “remains deeply alarmed by the rapidly deteriorating situation for civilians in northern Gaza, including mass displacement and the lack of essentials for survival,” said UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq, briefing reporters in New York. Mr. Guterres called...
“Although he does not comment on events of this nature, the Secretary-General is interested that this now leads to an immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza,” Farhan Haq told the daily press briefing at UN Headquarters. Increasingly dire in the...
“Rarely have we seen – and this is what bothers me – extensive patterns of unlawful, discriminatory and disproportionate restriction by States and private actors on freedom of expression,” said Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur mandated to promote and protect this right globally. Ms. Khan briefed journalists at UN...
In the first week of October alone, close to 25,000 people fled to eastern Chad, marking the highest weekly influx this year. This follows months of intensifying violence in Darfur, and Chad now hosts over 600,000 Sudanese refugees, which is more than any other country in the region. Since the conflict...
Joyce Msuya, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, briefed ambassadors on the situation in the north, where fighting has escalated. Hospitals are running out of fuel and critical medical supplies, and food stocks are dwindling. Patients burned alive Ms. Msuya said that since her last briefing a week ago, the people...
Israeli forces struck tents sheltering displaced civilians near al Aqsa hospital, in an area where people from northern Gaza were told to relocate. At least four people were burned to death, and scores of others, including women and children, suffered severe burns. Just hours earlier, another strike on a school...
“Throughout the night, I spoke to a colleague sheltering in the compound who told me, ‘We miraculously survived, the fire caught everywhere even the tent where we were sleeping burnt. The scene is terrifying,’” said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA. Images shared by UNRWA...
The warning from Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA UNRWA was prompted by renewed evacuation orders from the Israeli military, which “many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe”. The development comes amid reports by the local authorities of intense Israeli bombardment in the...
“It’s impossible to meet the needs of more than a million people who have been suddenly uprooted, displaced and dispossessed without additional resources coming in,” said Matthew Hollingworth, WFP Country Director in Lebanon (From Beirut): “This was not a country that was well prepared because of all of the challenges...
That day was in November 2023, around a month into the war in Gaza. Ala’a is among an estimated 155,000 pregnant women and new mothers in the Gaza Strip who for the past year have been forced to give birth under fire, in tents, while fleeing bombs and often without assistance,...
At least 18 people were killed, and many more fatalities could be trapped under the rubble of the three-storied building, according to the UN human rights office (OHCHR). The killings “marked yet another escalation of the violence”, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at the regular news briefing...
The latest death toll has surpassed more than 41,000 people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health – the majority of them women and children – while most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been forcibly displaced and trapped in only 10 per cent of the territory, but in...