UN News Today 23 October 2026 |

Yemen: deepening concerns for Taiz City as aid is blocked from entering

Aid agencies warned on Friday of the fast-developing humanitarian emergency inside Taiz City in Yemen, which has been encircled by de facto Houthi forces fighting Government troops along the country’s west coast.

The escalation between Houthi separatists and the Aden-based Government began in early September, ending the relative calm brought about by a 2022 truce.

Here’s Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office, OCHA:

“It’s 20 days and counting since Taiz has been cut off…we are seeing increasingly that the fighting makes it impossible for us to get in and impossible for people to get out.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) is one of several UN agencies responding to immense needs across Yemen. It reported on Friday that more than 800,000 people in Taiz have been cut off from assistance alone. 

This includes 600,000 people who depend on humanitarian assistance and 200,000 women and children. 

“We’re desperately trying to regain access to Taiz and we continue to support the broader operations across Yemen,” said the agency’s Regional Communications Officer Azfar Deen.

Don’t forget Sudan’s El Fasher survivors, one year since city fell

One year since paramilitary forces rampaged through Sudan’s El Fasher, the legacy of fear and trauma continues to haunt thousands of survivors.

That’s the message from gender equality agency UN Women, which reported that nine in 10 Sudanese aid organisations it surveyed had found women or girls in distress who had received no mental health, psychosocial or legal support since fleeing the Darfuri city.

UN Women regional director Anna Mutavati said that some people have started to return, “but the fear of violence is constant”:

“The scars of the violence in El Fasher have not faded. Women and girls continue to live with the trauma of sexual violence, the disappearance of their daughters, their sisters, their mothers, their husbands, and their sons, the killing of family members, and the loss of their homes, property, and livelihoods.”

The war in Sudan began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – former allies who had jointly seized power in a 2021 coup.

Ms. Mutavati said that drone attacks are increasing across Blue Nile, Khartoum, West Kordofan, Gedaref and Kassala. “Most of those killed or injured are women and children. Many had already fled violence, including sexual violence, she told journalists. 

DR Congo: Ebola disease moves ever deeper into remote locations

It is nearly six months since the Ebola disease outbreak caused by Bundibugyo virus was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In that time, it has killed 4,727 people and infected over twice that number, with cases confirmed in France, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda.

Inside DRC, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported that infections are still being diagnosed across the vast and remote east and northeast of the country, as the virus moves into increasingly hard-to-reach locations often affected by conflict.

A potentially more positive development this week is the drop in the number of people dying in the community or away from or Ebola treatment centres, said WHO’s Dr Catherine Smallwood:

“So, that signals that some of the actions that we’ve been taking to increase the level of early detection and the quick referral of patients to transit centres or Ebola treatment centres has been working and we hope that that will continue. However, in parts of eastern DRC, including in parts of North Kivu, we fear that patients are visiting between two to five different health facilities before they’re referred to Ebola treatment centres.”

Dr Smallwood said that 30,000 people a day are being monitored as contacts of confirmed Ebola patients in a bid to stop transmission. 

This involves a quarantine period of 21 days, which represents “a very significant additional burden” for already vulnerable families, she noted.

To help patients and their relatives, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) provides hot meals; it has delivered more than 744,000 dinners across 60 Ebola treatment and isolation facilities, and distributed at least 3,000 metric tons of food. 

This assistance helps individuals like Francine Birungi Amoti in Ituri province, who lost a child to Ebola. 

Today, she is raising her six surviving children and another baby entrusted to her care, but violence has cut her off from her fields. “If you go [out], you may not even return alive and I do not have money to buy food at the local market. So, we stay at home, and WFP helps us enormously,” she said.

Daniel Johnson, UN News