UN News Today 13 June 2025 |

Israel-Iran crisis: UN chief urges calm after overnight strikes

Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned Israeli strikes in Iran late on Thursday evening and urged “maximum restraint” from Member States.

The head of the UN-backed atomic watchdog, the IAEA, meanwhile has also highlighted the risk of a wider conflict.  

Any military escalation in the Middle East should be censured, the UN chief said in a statement issued by his spokesperson’s office.

“He is particularly concerned by Israeli attacks on nuclear installations in Iran while talks between Iran and the United States on the status of Iran’s nuclear programme are underway,” said Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General – a reference to a meeting between both countries in Oman on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, announced that the Iranian authorities had confirmed that the Natanz enrichment site 300 kilometres south of Tehran had been “impacted” but that radiation levels had not changed.

According to Iranian media, 78 people were killed and hundreds more injured in Israel’s strikes on Tehran.

Victims of DRC violence start to rebuild shattered lives and livelihoods

As fighting continues in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN issued an appeal on Friday on behalf of people uprooted by the violence, to help them rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

Since the beginning of the year, Rwanda-backed M23 fighters have swept across eastern DRC, taking key cities including Goma and Bukavu.

The violence has displaced more than one million people in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.

In the village of Sake in North Kivu, Damien Mama from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said that people want to work but they need  long-term assistance, in addition to emergency food and shelter:

“So what’s the need: that is also restoring businesses supply, providing income-generating activities for the women and the youth creating jobs and also responding to one of the major issues here which is sexual gender-based violence.”

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), during the most intense phase of this year’s conflict, a child was raped every 30 minutes.

In the next five months, UNDP plans to support the creation of 1,000 jobs and restore basic infrastructure benefiting about 15,000 people.

To do this, the UN agency needs $25 million; it has already secured $14 million from South Korea, Canada, the UK and Sweden.

Eastern Chad ‘reaching a breaking point’ as Sudan war refugees continue to arrive

To eastern Chad finally, where aid teams warn that host communities are reaching breaking point because of climate shocks and the pressure of hosting war refugees from neighbouring Sudan.

In an alert, the UN’s top aid official in Chad, François Batalingaya, warned that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding almost unnoticed by the world’s media.

“Right now, nearly 300,000 people are stranded at the border, waiting to be relocated inland. Tens of thousands, mostly women and children, are sleeping in the open without shelter, clean water and health care. These are survivors of war. They arrive traumatized, hungry, and with nothing. They recount stories of mass killings, sexual violence and entire communities destroyed.”

Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, more than 850,000 Sudanese refugees have crossed into Chad. They’ve joined the 400,000 existing Sudanese refugees who have arrived over the last 15 years.

The UN aid official explained that even before the latest Sudanese arrivals, nearly one million people in eastern Chad were in urgent need of help.

Today, “they are sharing what little they have – food, water, and space – with those fleeing the war,” Mr. Batalingaya said.

In an appeal for international assistance, he warned that clinics are overwhelmed, malnutrition is rising and basic services are buckling.

Daniel Johnson, UN News

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