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UN Says a Record Number of Aid Workers Were Killed in 2023 and This Year May Be Even Higher

FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
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UN Says a Record Number of Aid Workers Were Killed in 2023 and This Year May Be Even Higher

FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
FILE -A World Food Program (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)

A record number of aid workers were killed in conflicts around the world last year – more than half after the Israel-Hamas war started on Oct. 7 -- and this year may become even deadlier, the United Nations said Monday.
The 280 aid workers from 33 countries killed in 2023 was more than double the previous year’s figure of 118, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs known as OCHA said in a report on World Humanitarian Day.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted that honoring the humanitarians killed in the deadliest year on record is not enough, The Associated Press reported.
“In Sudan & many other places, aid workers are attacked, killed, injured & abducted. We demand an end to impunity so that perpetrators face justice,” the UN chief said.
OCHA said this year “may be on track for an even deadlier outcome,” with 172 aid workers killed as of Aug. 7, according to a provisional account from the Aid Worker Security Database.
More than 280 aid workers have been killed in the war in Gaza, now in its 11th month, mainly in airstrikes. The majority of them are Palestinians who worked for the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, according to OCHA. It said that “extreme levels of violence in Sudan and South Sudan ” also have contributed to the death toll both this year and last.
The UN’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, said in a statement that “the normalization of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable, unconscionable and enormously harmful for aid operations everywhere.”
In a letter to the 193 UN member nations, 413 humanitarian organizations around the world said: “The brutal hostilities we are seeing in multiple conflicts around the world have exposed a terrible truth: We are living in an era of impunity.”
The aid organizations appealed to all countries, the wider international community and all parties to conflicts to protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.
World Humanitarian Day commemorates the Aug. 19, 2003, terrorist bombing of the UN offices at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad which killed 22 UN staff members including the top UN envoy to Iraq, Sergio Viera de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat.
At a ceremony at UN headquarters Monday before the tattered UN flag retrieved from the hotel that day, dozens of current UN staff members and relatives of some of the victims stood in silent tribute to their memory – as did many watching around the world.

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UK Police Charge Two Men with Belonging to Hezbollah, Attending Terrorism Training

Hezbollah flags flutter as protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, rally to show support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon's Hezbollah, in Sanaa, Yemen September 27, 2024. (Reuters)
Hezbollah flags flutter as protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, rally to show support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon's Hezbollah, in Sanaa, Yemen September 27, 2024. (Reuters)
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UK Police Charge Two Men with Belonging to Hezbollah, Attending Terrorism Training

Hezbollah flags flutter as protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, rally to show support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon's Hezbollah, in Sanaa, Yemen September 27, 2024. (Reuters)
Hezbollah flags flutter as protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, rally to show support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon's Hezbollah, in Sanaa, Yemen September 27, 2024. (Reuters)

Two British-Lebanese men appeared in a London court on Tuesday, charged with belonging to the banned Iran-backed group Hezbollah and attending terrorism training camps, with one of the two accused of helping procure parts for drones.

Annis Makki, 40, is charged with attending a terrorist training camp at the Birket Jabbour airbase in Lebanon in 2021, being involved in the preparation of terrorist acts, being a member of Hezbollah, and expressing support both for Hezbollah and the banned Palestinian group Hamas.

Mohamed Hadi Kassir, 33, is also accused of belonging to Hezbollah and attending a training camp in Baffliyeh in south Lebanon in 2015 and at the Birket Jabbour airbase in 2021. He indicated not guilty pleas to the charges.

Prosecutor Kristel Pous told Westminster Magistrates' Court that Kassir was "an entrenched member of Hezbollah" and that images had been found of him "training in a Hezbollah-controlled camp and undertaking hostage training exercises in 2015".

Pous also said Makki had access to a "wide-ranging Hezbollah network" which was linked to facilitating the acquisition of parts to be used in unmanned aerial vehicles.

Judge Paul Goldspring remanded both men in custody until their next court appearance at London's Old Bailey court on January 16.

The men were arrested at their home addresses in London in April and rearrested last week when they were subsequently charged.

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of London's Counter Terrorism Policing, said in a statement before Tuesday's hearing: "I want to reassure the public that I do not assess there is an ongoing threat to the wider public as a result of the activities of these two individuals."

World

Millions Facing Acute Food Insecurity in Afghanistan as Winter Looms, UN Warns

Boys stay on a hilltop overlooking Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb. 27, 2022. (AP)
Boys stay on a hilltop overlooking Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb. 27, 2022. (AP)
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Millions Facing Acute Food Insecurity in Afghanistan as Winter Looms, UN Warns

Boys stay on a hilltop overlooking Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb. 27, 2022. (AP)
Boys stay on a hilltop overlooking Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb. 27, 2022. (AP)

More than 17 million people in Afghanistan are facing crisis levels of hunger in the coming winter months, the leading international authority on hunger crises and the UN food aid agency warned Tuesday.

The number at risk is some 3 million more than a year ago.

Economic woes, recurrent drought, shrinking international aid and influx of Afghans returning home from countries like neighboring Iran and Pakistan have strained resources and added to the pressures on food security, reports the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as IPC, which tracks hunger crises.

"What the IPC tells us is that more than 17 million people in Afghanistan are facing acute food insecurity. That is 3 million more than last year," said Jean-Martin Bauer, director of food security at the UN's World Food Program, told reporters in Geneva.

"There are almost 4 million children in a situation of acute malnutrition," he said by video from Rome. "About 1 million are severely acutely malnourished, and those are children who actually require hospital treatment."

Food assistance in Afghanistan is reaching only 2.7% of the population, the IPC report says — exacerbated by a weak economy, high unemployment and lower inflows of remittances from abroad — as more than 2.5 million people returned from Iran and Pakistan this year.

More than 17 million people, or more than one-third of the population, are set to face crisis levels of food insecurity in the four-month period through to March 2026, the report said. Of those, 4.7 million could face emergency levels of food insecurity.

An improvement is expected by the spring harvest season starting in April, IPC projected.

The UN last week warned of a "severe" and "precarious" crisis in the country as Afghanistan enters its first winter in years without US foreign assistance and almost no international food distribution.

Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief, told the Security Council on Wednesday that the situation has been exacerbated by "overlapping shocks," including recent deadly earthquakes, and the growing restrictions on humanitarian aid access and staff.

While Fletcher said nearly 22 million Afghans will need UN assistance in 2026, his organization will focus on 3.9 million facing the most urgent need of lifesaving help in light of the reduced donor contributions.

World

Suspected Militants Kill 2, Including a Police Officer Guarding Polio Team in Northwestern Pakistan

A health worker marks a child’s finger after administering a polio vaccination in Hyderabad, Pakistan, 15 December 2025. EPA/NADEEM KHAWAR
A health worker marks a child’s finger after administering a polio vaccination in Hyderabad, Pakistan, 15 December 2025. EPA/NADEEM KHAWAR
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Suspected Militants Kill 2, Including a Police Officer Guarding Polio Team in Northwestern Pakistan

A health worker marks a child’s finger after administering a polio vaccination in Hyderabad, Pakistan, 15 December 2025. EPA/NADEEM KHAWAR
A health worker marks a child’s finger after administering a polio vaccination in Hyderabad, Pakistan, 15 December 2025. EPA/NADEEM KHAWAR

Suspected militants opened fire on a police officer guarding a team of polio workers in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing the officer and a passerby before fleeing, police said.
No polio worker was harmed in the attack that occurred in Bajaur, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, according to local police chief Samad Khan, The Associated Press said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups blamed by the government for similar attacks in the region and elsewhere in the country.
The shooting came a day after Pakistan launched a weeklong nationwide vaccination campaign aimed at immunizing 45 million children. According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries where polio has not been eradicated.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack in a statement and vowed strong action against those responsible.
Pakistan has reported 30 polio cases since January, down from 74 during the same period last year, according to a statement from the government-run Polio Eradication Initiative.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
More than 200 polio workers and police assigned to protect them have been killed in Pakistan since the 1990s, according to health and security officials.