Over the weekend, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) observed intensive activity by Israeli forces, including extensive airstrikes near several villages, continued naval operations off the coast of Naqoura, and drone activity close by – including drones reportedly operated by Hezbollah militants.

On Friday, UNIFIL patrols faced restrictions near Al Bayyada, where Israeli tanks blocked the road. Another UNIFIL position was impacted by machine gun fire, with one round hitting a UN vehicle parked inside a compound.

“We reiterate once again that our peacekeepers must never be targeted, and their safety and security must be guaranteed at all times by all parties,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at his regular press briefing in New York.

Despite the insecurity, UN peacekeepers facilitated an aid convoy of around 30 trucks to the border town of Rmeich, where approximately 7,000 residents remain, amid difficult and dangerous conditions.

Humanitarian situation

On the broader humanitarian front, the situation continues to deteriorate. Lebanese authorities reported that 13 people – including one child and four women – were killed, and 32 injured in strikes across southern Lebanon on Sunday.

Authorities say more than 124,000 people are now sheltering in 625 schools and public buildings, while new displacement orders issued in 11 towns in Nabatieh were followed by airstrikes, forcing additional families to flee.

Some residents attempting to return home have instead gone back to shelters after finding their houses destroyed or inaccessible.

Healthcare under strain

According to the latest update from UN agencies and partners, the situation remains “highly volatile,” particularly in southern areas and locations where displaced people are attempting to return.

Health services are severely constrained. Three hospitals and 41 primary healthcare centres remain non-operational, while several others are only partially functioning.

These limitations are placing intense pressure on remaining facilities, reducing the quality and continuity of care and leaving many communities without access to essential services.

If gaps are not addressed, health officials warn of rising complications, avoidable deaths and a growing healthcare crisis.

Gaza aid teams call for access, civilian protection

The UN’s top relief official, Tom Fletcher said aid teams continue to work “strenuously to help Palestinians in Gaza,” but need “sustained access, the protection of civilians, neutrality and partnership.”

Last week, humanitarian partners delivered tents, bedding and other emergency supplies to nearly 4,500 households, while improved emergency shelters were installed in the devastated southern area around Khan Younis to provide temporary protection for displaced families.

Health concerns are mounting. Aid workers report rising cases of skin diseases and other illnesses linked to pests and poor living conditions, while more than 6,600 people require prosthetic and rehabilitation care.

That includes thousands of civilians who’ve had limbs amputated since the violence erupted in October 2023, yet there are only eight prosthetic technicians on hand in Gaza.

Humanitarian partners say that 20 per cent of amputees are children, warning it could take five years or more to address current needs, due to the chronic shortages.

Mr. De Croo, who chose Gaza for his first overseas visit since being appointed to the top job in November 2025, called for an expansion of access to the occupied territory for UN agencies to strengthen efforts to remove rubble and waste, provide shelter and medical equipment and evacuate patients.

On Monday, Mr. De Croo visited Firas Market in downtown Gaza City, where around 370,000 tonnes of waste had piled up during the two-year war as garbage collection and sewage systems collapsed, turning it into a massive, foul-smelling landfill.

‘It will take us seven years to remove all the rubble’

UNDP bulldozers began removing the waste a week ago, creating a glimmer of hope for Palestinians, with the aim of reopening the market as an economic hub. The UN entity is also involved in ensuring shelter, basic services, and education and health needs are met.

Speaking to the media from Jerusalem, following his three-day trip to Gaza and the West Bank, Mr. De Croo, formerly a Minister for Development in the Belgian government, said that the living conditions were the worst he had ever seen and that, so far, only 0.5 per cent of the rubble in Gaza has been removed.

“At the current pace, it will take us seven years to remove all the rubble,” he said. “We need to have more capacity to do rubble removal and rubble recycling. 90 per cent of the people of Gaza today live in the middle of that rubble, which is extremely dangerous”.

The vast majority of Gazans are still living in rudimentary tents, which the UNDP is beginning to replace with recovery housing units. 4,000 of them are ready, but up to 300,000 are needed for the population. 

“We understand the security concerns of the Israeli authorities”, explained Mr. De Croo, “but that should not be a reason to refuse access to organisations such as UNDP, other UN organizations and international NGOs.”

EPA/Shutterstock

As India advances negotiations for 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA), likely through a Government-to-Government agreement for the Dassault Rafale, a crucial distinction in software access has emerged. While the Indian Air Force (IAF) is expected to gain significant operational control over the aircraft’s software ecosystem, it will not receive the full “source code” traditionally associated with combat aircraft.

Instead, Dassault Aviation is likely to provide API (Application Programming Interface)–level access, keeping exclusive control over the Rafale’s core combat kernel. This approach represents a pragmatic compromise between India’s demand for operational independence and Dassault’s need to safeguard its proprietary technology.

Under this arrangement, India will gain access to the “application layer” of the aircraft’s software. Indian engineers will be able to interface with the Rafale’s systems to integrate domestically developed weapons and sensors. However, the aircraft’s “combat kernel”—the central brain responsible for flight safety, sensor fusion, and threat response—remains a sealed system controlled by Dassault.

This marks a departure from older platforms like the Mirage 2000, which featured monolithic fire-control systems. In those legacy jets, modifying one element often required deep intervention across the entire system. By contrast, the Rafale employs a modern, distributed avionics framework called the Modular Data Processing Unit (MDPU), which partitions critical flight and mission logic from other applications under ARINC-653 standards.

This architecture allows Dassault to offer India a controlled “sandbox.” Through these interfaces, the IAF can integrate its own systems—such as the Astra Mk2 and Mk3 air-to-air missiles, Rudram anti-radiation missiles, and locally developed smart bombs—without altering the core software that governs flight dynamics or fuses sensor data.

However, the Rafale’s fusion engine—the software that merges data from the RBE2 AESA radar, the SPECTRA electronic warfare suite, and optronic sensors into a single tactical picture—remains off-limits. The logic that determines how the aircraft identifies and reacts to threats is considered Dassault’s “crown jewel” and has never been shared with export customers, even European allies.

For the IAF, the deal ensures “operational sovereignty” but not “software sovereignty.” Operational sovereignty allows India to independently select which weapons to carry and modify mission data libraries to suit local conditions, without needing French permission. Software sovereignty, however, remains restricted: India cannot alter the fundamental algorithms controlling radar tracking, electronic warfare, or sensor fusion, and any structural change would still require Dassault certification.

This limitation previously complicated the Indian Navy’s request to integrate the indigenous Uttam AESA radar on the Rafale Marine variant. Replacing a core sensor would have required opening the fusion kernel—something Dassault was unwilling to do.

The 114-jet deal is expected to be centered on the Rafale F4 standard, which features a software-defined architecture emphasizing connectivity and networked operations. In this setup, API-level access is critical: it allows India’s Rafales to communicate with national assets, such as Netra AEW&C aircraft and ground-based radars, while remaining integrated into the global Rafale ecosystem for safety, maintenance, and updates.

Ultimately, while India will not own the “brain” of the Rafale, negotiated API access gives it full control over the “limbs.” This ensures rapid deployment of indigenous weaponry and sensors on a foreign platform, balancing national operational independence with Dassault’s need to protect its intellectual property.

Briefing reporters in New York on Wednesday, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said hostilities in parts of the Gaza Strip are still resulting in casualties and repeated disruptions to humanitarian operations.

On Tuesday, the UN and its partners coordinated eight planned humanitarian movements inside Gaza with Israeli authorities. Of those, only one movement was facilitated, while the remaining seven were impeded, denied or cancelled.

Despite the challenges, UN teams managed to collect more than 200 pallets of medicine and five tankers of fuel from the Kerem Shalom/Kerem Abu Salem crossing. Additional tents were also retrieved from the Kissufim crossing.

“Every delivery into Gaza makes a significant difference,” Mr. Dujarric said.

Health system barely functioning

The Spokesperson stressed that Gaza’s health system remains in a state of extreme fragility.

“Not a single hospital in Gaza is fully functional,” he said, noting that only 18 out of the Strip’s 36 hospitals are currently partially operational.

On Monday, teams from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) facilitated the medical evacuation of 33 Palestinians in need of critical care, along with more than 100 companions. However, the scale of unmet medical need remains overwhelming.

“There are still more than 16,500 patients who need to receive medical care outside of Gaza,” Mr. Dujarric said.

WHO continues to call for safe access through all evacuation routes, particularly to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and for medical evacuation convoys to be expedited at crossings.

Maintaining education

Meanwhile, UN agencies continue efforts to sustain essential civilian services. The UN agency assisting Palestine refugees (UNRWA) is maintaining learning activities for displaced children across Gaza.

As of Sunday, UNRWA was operating nearly 350 temporary learning spaces in 64 shelters, providing in-person education for more than 47,000 boys and girls.

Humanitarians also continue to deliver other critical support.

Call for unimpeded access

Mr. Dujarric said the United Nations and its partners stand ready to scale up operations if restrictions are eased.

“We once again call for unimpeded humanitarian access so that teams can reach everyone they need,” he said.

“We and our partners can do much more as soon as restrictions on relief items and aid groups are lifted.”

In recent days the Emergency Relief Coordinator has travelled to various parts of the war-torn country and met leaders, frontline responders and survivors of the crisis.

“We need more UN boots on the ground,” Mr. Fletcher said. “The UN is a ship that was not built to stay in the harbour, and this visit has been part of that big push to make sure we’re mobilised closer to those we serve.”

Progress on negotiations

Mr. Fletcher said he had a “useful” meeting with General Burhan, leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), focused on getting “unlimited” and “unhindered” humanitarian access.

He also met representatives from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia in what was a “tough” discussion, where he set out “unequivocally” that the UN will be expecting protection for civilians and insisting on accountability and safe passages for civilians and aid convoys.

“We have, I think, a pretty strong agreement from the authorities [of the military government] in Port Sudan and the RSF on full access and safe passage for our convoys to go in and for civilians to get out,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Now let’s see what happens next.”

‘Crime scene’ in El Fasher 

The UN also made progress on getting teams into El Fasher, in Darfur, on the organization’s terms, Mr. Fletcher added.

“We’re not going to be instrumentalised,” he emphasized. “This is a potential crime scene, and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the right people going in, and that the aid is genuinely neutral and impartial.”

El Fasher was captured by the RSF last month after more than 500 days of siege, leading to the displacement of some 90,000 people since the end of October.

When asked about the number of deaths in El Fasher, Mr. Fletcher said there is no credible answer on how many have been killed so far.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in Tawila, but “many people clearly aren’t getting out of El Fasher,” he said.

“One of the things we want to do when we go in is to find out why that is and to see what the conditions are, in which they are being held there.”

That ordeal reduced people to eating peanut shells and animal feed, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday, before condemning the reported mass killings of civilians, executions based on ethnicity and other atrocities, which are likely continuing.

At the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Mr. Türk told Member States that bloodstains on the ground in El Fasher can be seen from space.

“We warned that the fall of the city to the Rapid Support Forces would result in a bloodbath,” he said, before calling for immediate international action to stop the violence at a special meeting convened by concerned Member States. “All those involved in this conflict should know: we are watching you, and justice must prevail,” the High Commissioner insisted.

Stranded, seeking help

According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, nearly 100,000 people have fled El Fasher and villages close by in the last two weeks alone.

“They are stranded somewhere,” said the agency’s Head of Sub Office in Port Sudan, Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet. Families arriving in Tawila, about 50 kilometres from El Fasher have recounted “unimaginable horrors” before and after fleeing the city, she said.

Briefing journalists in Geneva via video, Ms. Parlevliet highlighted widespread reports of rape and sexual violence by escapees and scenes of desperation.

“Parents are searching for missing children, many traumatized due to conflict and the dangerous journey to reach safety. Unable to pay ransoms, families have lost young male relatives to arrests or forced recruitment into armed groups,” the UNHCR official explained.

Those hoping to find safety away from El Fasher face ever more dangerous journeys skirting around military checkpoints, some travelling for up to 15 days with limited food and water before reaching shelter in locations including Ad Dabbah in Northern state.

The small town on the bank of the river Nile now houses at least 37,000 people from El Fasher and thousands more are thought to be on their way. Reports also indicate that armed groups are forcibly returning many people to El Fasher where conditions are dire, UNHCR said, citing local sources.

“Thousands of people, particularly the elderly, those with disabilities and the wounded, remain trapped, either prevented from leaving the city or lacking the means or strength to flee,” Ms. Parlevliet told journalists.

A crisis of staggering proportions

Sudan is the world’s largest displacement crisis with more than 12 million people uprooted inside and outside the country.

For many of those attempting to return home elsewhere in the vast east African nation, the threat of unexploded weapons remains huge, according to the UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS.

It noted that in South Kordofan, West Kordofan, and Blue Nile States alone, 13 million square kilometres of land are contaminated.

“There are many other countries that are affected by explosive remnants of war and landmines…Sudan is very different. Why? Because, war is mainly happening in urban areas,” said Sediq Rashid, Chief of UNMAS Sudan, speaking from Port Sudan.

He explained that just within the capital, Khartoum, risks ranged from unexploded and abandoned ammunitions, anti-vehicle mines and anti-personnel mines.

Displaced families are particularly at risk, often settling in unfamiliar locations “without any awareness of past conflicts or contamination”, Mr. Rashid continued.

Meanwhile, civilian casualties from mines and other unexploded ordnance continue to rise – “and we know that the cases that are being reported represent only a fraction of the true scale of the harm”, he said.