UN News Today 04 September 2025 |

Afghanistan quake latest: Death toll jumps to 2,200, aid teams persevere

As the death toll from the Afghanistan earthquake disaster jumped to more than 2,200 on Thursday, UN agencies continued to help, while calling for funding to build sturdier housing to withstand future shocks.

Since the initial earthquake on Sunday in eastern Nangarhar province, landslides and several strong aftershocks have disrupted the work of rescue teams.

In an update, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said that access routes remain blocked in various locations including the districts of Chawkay and Nurgal, both in Kunar province, although the authorities have deployed earth-moving machinery to restore access.

Latest estimates indicate that approximately half a million people have been affected – including 263,000 children – while at least 5,000 homes have suffered partial or total damage.

Among the UN agencies operating there, UN Habitat noted that the earthquake had caused massive upheaval in a remote region where recent returnees from Pakistan and Iran were just beginning to settle.

“There are still more earthquakes every day in the region, causing landslides and making access even harder,” said UN Habitat’s Stephanie Loose in Kabul.

She noted that women and girls were the main victims because of strict rules preventing them from leaving their homes alone.

Gaza: Families fleeing need a ceasefire desperately, says veteran UNICEF worker

To Gaza, where the intensifying Israeli military operation in Gaza City is having a devastating impact on many of the people still sheltering there, one veteran UN aid worker has said.

Speaking from the war-torn city, Tess Ingram from the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, described meeting families who fled from their neighbourhoods in fear, in the middle of the night and with only the clothes they were wearing.

Now they’re displaced once again, Ms. Ingram said:

“I’ve spoken to countless children in hospitals over the last two weeks with fresh trauma injuries, including yesterday in Al-Ahli hospital. I met a four-year-old girl with an explosive injury to the back of her head. Doctors said they operated to protect her exposed brain matter and reinforce her broken skull. But even after the surgery, brain fluid still leaks from around her sutures.”

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, on Thursday condemned the Israeli escalation of military operations in northern Gaza, as part of Israel’s plan to take full control of Gaza City.

“There are no safe areas and movement is dangerous,” OHCHR said.

Papua New Guinea’s on the frontline of climate change, warns UN’s Guterres

Papua New Guinea and the Pacific islands are climate change’s “Ground Zero” whose precious rain forests and ecosystems deserve the world’s support to ensure they’re protected, the UN Secretary-General has insisted.

Speaking from Papua New Guinea where he visited the world’s third largest rainforest and sat down with civil society representatives, António Guterres highlighted the challenges brought about by climate change in the Pacific region.

Earlier, he repeated his warning that the 1.5 degree limit on the rise in global temperatures agreed to in Paris in 2015 remains in jeopardy.

And although scientists say that it is still possible to limit global warming, the UN chief urged countries to unveil their new national climate plans to reduce emissions and “seize the opportunities” arising from the renewable energy revolution.

Daniel Johnson, UN News