(UN News)* —Lifesaving supplies in Gaza continue to run dangerously low, nearly four weeks into the total aid blockade and deadly bombardment of the enclave by Israel, UN humanitarians said on Friday .
According to local health authorities in Gaza, 830 people were killed between 18-23 March, including 174 women and 322 children. A further 1,787 were injured.
“The acts of war that we see bear the hallmarks of atrocity crimes,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office, OCHA.
Even by Israel’s brutal, barbaric standards, the cruel, callous carnage carried out by its military in Gaza has come as a shock to the world.
The carnage which occurred on Tuesday 18th March 2025 killed 436 individuals, the majority of them children and women.
What has exacerbated the tragedy is the fact that the carnage happened as its victims were preparing for, or partaking of, their dawn meal just before beginning their daily fast during Ramadan, one of Islam’s most revered practices.
It is important to note that a big portion of the Gazan population is being subjected to starvation by the Israeli government as a way of forcing them out of the Strip.
()* — The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Friday strongly condemned the looting of vital humanitarian supplies from Al Bashair Hospital in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, warning that the theft puts thousands of malnourished children and mothers at risk.
(UN News)* — Children, refugees and displaced people worldwide are paying the price for the deep-seated funding crisis that has engulfed the international aid sector, made worse by pronounced cuts in Washington, the UN children’s and refugee agencies said on Friday .
20 March 2025 — Somalia is enduring a drought of crippling intensity, driven by failed rains and a brutal dry season, known as Jilal. The projections are dire: over four million people could face crisis-level hunger by April 2025.
Hawa Ali collects water from a newly renovated shallow well in Shamindo village, Jowhar district. Photo: Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC
Berlin/ Geneva, 21 March 2025 – At least 8,938 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2024, making it the deadliest year on record, according to new data collected by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Omar, an Ethiopian migrant, is treated for dehydration and exhaustion by IOM’s Mobile Unit in the Djiboutian desert. Chances of survival are low for migrants crossing the desert in extreme temperatures and the weakest are often left behind. Photo: IOM 2020/Alexander Bee
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay / LONDON, Mar 20 2025 (IPS)* – In a world of overlapping crises, from brutal conflicts and democratic regression to climate breakdown and astronomic levels of economic inequality, one vital force stands as a shield and solution: civil society.
Credit: Bryan Dozier/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
(UN News)* —Israeli bombardments continued across Gaza on Wednesday , killing hundreds more people – many of them women and children – and leaving widespread destruction in its wake, according to local authorities.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that leaflets were dropped over Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the shattered-north, as well as eastern Khan Younis in the south, ordering residents once again to leave their homes.
(UN News)* —The rapid spread of the highly infectious avian flu virus H5N1 has reached an “unprecedented” scale, wiping out hundreds of millions of birds worldwide and increasingly spilling over into mammals, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on Monday .
World Bank | A laboratory specialist doing research into avian influenza at a human health lab. (file).
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Briefing Member States in Rome, FAO officials called for urgent action to strengthen biosecurity, surveillance and rapid-response mechanisms to curb the outbreak.