UN News Today 17 March 2026 |

Mid-East war prompts fears of most severe aid disruption since COVID: WFP

The war in the Middle East could cause the worst disruption to lifesaving humanitarian work since COVID, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.

“Beyond the immediate fallout in Lebanon, the conflict has also caused major knock-on effects on global humanitarian operations,” the agency’s Deputy Executive Director, Carl Skau, told reporters in Geneva.

“Our supply chains may be on the brink of the most severe disruption since COVID and the Ukraine war back in 2022. Our shipments of life-saving food are being affected by the squeeze on trade. It is taking us longer to deliver by sea and our costs have increased.” 

Mr. Skau said that relief operations now face longer shipping times and increasing costs, amid a third week of war sparked by Israeli and US strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks by Tehran and allied groups.

If the Middle East conflict continues into June, “an additional 45 million people could be pushed into acute hunger by price rises,” the WFP official noted. 

Amid ongoing hostilities – including Iranian counter-strikes against Gulf states and Israeli attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon – WFP’s shipping costs are already 18 per cent higher than they were at the start of the war, because of the hike in oil prices. 

According to the agency’s Mr. Skau, WFP has been forced to cut food rations for people in famine conditions in Sudan. In addition, it can only support one in four acutely malnourished children in Afghanistan, home to the world’s worst malnutrition crisis.

Lebanon’s displaced fear ‘targeted assassinations’, warns top aid official 

To Lebanon, where Israeli airstrikes have destroyed entire residential buildings in dense urban environments and people fear so-called “targeted executions”.

That’s the worrying update from UN agencies in Beirut and beyond, where almost 20 per cent of the country’s people have been displaced – around one million people so far.

The UN’s top aid official in Lebanon, Imran Riza, said that the ongoing Israeli bombing of alleged Hezbollah targets, has continued to create anxiety among people uprooted by the violence, with targeted executions happening without warning and without displacement orders.

The top UN official in Lebanon also highlighted how air traffic disruption linked to the war is impacting humanitarian work:

“In [20]24 we were receiving an incredible amount of assistance also from the Gulf States, from the Saudis, from Qatar, from the UAE, from Oman, from Bahrain, etc, etc. We were getting a lot from Kuwait, and none of that is happening. The air bridge is no longer there.”

Afghanistan drug rehabilitation centre strike condemned

To Afghanistan, where the UN human rights office, OHCHR, has condemned a reported airstrike by Pakistani forces on a drug rehabilitation centre in the capital, Kabul, that is thought to have killed at least 100 people.

The development comes amid border clashes between Afghan de facto forces and the Pakistan military that flared up again in February.

Islamabad has denied striking the centre, while media reports indicate that hundreds were killed in the attack; witnesses described a scene of total destruction at the hospital where the centre was based. 

In Geneva, OHCHR spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan insisted that international humanitarian law protects civilians and civilian objects from such violence:

“Since the hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan escalated at the end of last month, 289 Afghan civilians, including 104 children and 59 women, have been killed or injured. Tens of thousands, mostly in the south and southeast of the country, have been displaced by the fighting.”

Mr. Al-Kheetan said that in Pakistan, many people have been forced to flee their homes and schools have been closed, because of the cross-border violence. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News