UN briefs on mounting humanitarian needs across Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, DRC, Ukraine and the Mediterranean
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Summary
A United Nations official outlined urgent humanitarian needs: attacks on health facilities and tens of thousands of health consultations in Gaza and Lebanon; suspension of WHO medevac from Gaza after a contracted worker was killed; displacement in Sudan and Haiti; and rising Mediterranean shipwreck deaths, with calls for expanded access and supplies.
An Agency official at the United Nations provided a multi-country humanitarian update, detailing health, displacement and protection concerns across several conflicts and crises.
On Lebanon and Gaza the official said WHO and partners have supported nearly 70,000 health consultations, including more than 800 pre- and postnatal visits, more than 51,000 patients have received medication and partners supported nearly 300 hospitalizations. The official said the World Health Organization has recorded roughly 100 attacks on health-care facilities since March 2, resulting in 54 deaths and 145 injuries among health workers, and warned these incidents discourage care-seeking.
The official said WHO director-general Tedros confirmed that a person contracted to provide services to WHO was killed and that WHO suspended medical evacuations of patients from Gaza through Rafah until further notice pending investigation. UN mine-action teams carried out nearly 70 assessments of unexploded explosive hazards and reached nearly 12,000 people across Gaza with risk-messaging, but said some explosive-ordnance-disposal activities cannot proceed because required equipment has not been allowed in.
On Sudan, the official reported deliveries of essential supplies and vaccination campaigns by UNICEF and WHO in Kordofan and Darfur, noted rising measles cases in crowded displacement sites and that a warehouse of health supplies was recently destroyed in White Nile State, disrupting medicine deliveries and compounding fuel shortages. The secretary-general's personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, was said to be consulting in Nairobi.
The official also briefed on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where peacekeepers repelled an attack on a Congolese army position in Loda and have provided temporary shelter and protection to nearly 10,000 civilians in Ituri over the past year. In Ukraine, the official cited a strike on a public bus in Nikopol that killed several people and injured about a dozen; humanitarian partners provided first aid and evacuations. In Haiti, violence in Artibonite was reported to have displaced more than 13,000 people, with most sheltering in host families and others in 16 sites.
The briefing also cited IOM estimates that the Mediterranean shipwrecks so far in 2026 have pushed deaths near 1,000, with more than 180 feared dead or missing in a recent wreck; the official urged stronger search-and-rescue coordination and expanded legal migration pathways.
The official closed the update by calling for immediate cessation of hostilities where they occur, rapid, safe and unimpeded humanitarian access and respect for international humanitarian law.
