Middle East

Winter supplies must enter the Gaza Strip where “lives are at stake”, the UN and partners said in an urgent appeal on Friday, in the wake of deadly rainfall this past weekend. 

An Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital on Wednesday night killed six people, injured 27 others and caused extensive damage. 

The situation in southern Lebanon remains volatile and extremely difficult for communities trying to rebuild their lives, UN peacekeepers based there report, despite a significant decrease in hostilities following an agreement in June between the United States, Lebanon and Israel. 

In Gaza, 10-year-old Anas is one of three siblings born without legs and with only two fingers on each of their hands. They struggle to move around and perform daily activities like eating and writing independently. 

Many children born in Syria since the war began in 2011 have no legal identity because nationality passes only through fathers – many of whom are dead or missing – a member of the independent UN commission investigating rights violations in the country said on Wednesday.

Gunfire hit and damaged multiple tents at a displacement site in Gaza’s northern Rafah region on Tuesday, reportedly causing injuries and forcing a humanitarian partner to leave the area, the UN aid coordination office (OCHA) has said.

Safa is 14. Her mother died earlier this year. She has no brothers or sisters. And a few weeks ago, as the crisis took hold, her father married her to an elderly man, afraid that if he were killed in the hostilities, no one would be left to protect her.

The UN human rights chief on Saturday demanded an independent investigation into the death of a Yemeni colleague held by the Houthis for more than two years, whose family learned of his death only weeks after it happened.

More than 280,000 people have now been displaced by fighting in Yemen and many vulnerable people are unable to access lifesaving relief because it is too dangerous to do so, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

Israeli forces continue to push Palestinians into ever-smaller areas of the Gaza Strip while destroying civilian infrastructure and attacking displacement sites, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, warned on Friday amid concerns of ethnic cleansing. 

Families in Gaza are bracing for a fourth winter in tents and makeshift shelters as UN aid operations face mounting obstacles, with transport suspended on Tuesday due to Israel’s closure of the key Kerem Shalom crossing for election day. 

Israel’s “aggressive operation” in the West Bank city of Hebron raises serious concerns of ethnic cleansing, UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned on Monday, as the number of Palestinians forced from their homes passed 3,000 on the eve of Israeli elections.

Aid agencies warned on Friday of the fast-developing humanitarian emergency inside Taiz City in Yemen, which has been encircled by de facto Houthi forces fighting government troops along the country’s west coast.

The UN said on Friday it was “extremely alarmed” by intensifying violence in the occupied West Bank, as Israel moved to seal off the territory following a deadly attack on its soldiers in Hebron.

The use of live ammunition, arson and the destruction of centuries-old olive trees have marked the opening weeks of this year’s harvest in the occupied West Bank.