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The ongoing violence in Gaza, on top of the sharply deteriorating humanitarian situation this year, is pushing the Palestinian population into a deep crisis, a dozen United Nations aid agencies working in the region warned today.

The Sudanese Government made no progress last month in either stopping militia attacks against civilians in Darfur, disarming those armed groups or prosecuting the individuals responsible for the worst atrocities, the senior United Nations envoy to Sudan said today.

India and Pakistan are preparing to quickly deploy some 1,700 soldiers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after the Security Council moved to bolster the United Nations peacekeeping operation there with an infusion of troops to conduct a range of new tasks, including protecting civilians from violence and enforcing an arms embargo in the east.

From Cambodia and Colombia to Uganda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, States are becoming much better at planning and implementing their programmes to reduce or eliminate the threat of landmines, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in his latest report on the deadly phenomenon.

The United Nations Security Council today failed to adopt a resolution that would have demanded Israel halt all military operations in northern Gaza and withdraw from the area.

Reacting to mounting civilian casualties, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the Government of Israel to halt its military incursions into the Gaza Strip while urging the Palestinian Authority to press militants to hold their fire.

Driven by prevailing fear, confusion and the politicization of humanitarian concerns, the world has become less friendly towards refugees - even though the number of people seeking asylum has fallen steeply - the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today.

At least 80 million children across 23 countries in sub-Saharan Africa will be immunized against polio over the next two years - the largest single public health campaign in history - in an attempt to protect the continent's children from the threat of a looming epidemic of the disease, United Nations agencies report.

Efforts to improve conditions in poor countries must target life in both urban and rural areas, which are interlinked and potentially mutually beneficial, United Nations officials said today marking World Habitat Day.

With the security situation in Cyprus increasingly benign, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended cutting the troop strength of the United Nations peacekeeping mission there by about one third while extending its mandate until mid-2005 to foster conditions conducive to a comprehensive settlement.