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Welcoming today’s international donors’ conference for Haiti, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on donors to give generously so that the impoverished Caribbean nation can rebuild its economy and infrastructure.

Though no cases of avian flu or its H5N1 virus have been reported yet in birds or humans anywhere in the Americas, United Nations health agencies and other partners today launched a new preparedness campaign for the disease, which they say could reach the hemisphere at any time and possibly mutate into a human pandemic.

The top United Nations aid official said today that Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip is a “disproportionate use of force” but he again emphasized that all sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were guilty of violating humanitarian law.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed shock and deep distress over what he called the “apparently deliberate targeting” by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of a United Nations observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two military observers, with two more feared dead.

Every day 1,200 people, half of them children, are killed in the conflict-hit Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of violence, disease and malnutrition, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a report issued today.

Almost 4,000 survivors from last year’s earthquake in northern Pakistan have been moved to relief camps from villages at risk of landslides as heavy monsoon rains lash the quake-affected areas, the United Nations relief agency said today, highlighting an intense, month-long UN-assisted relocation effort.

With violence continuing to tear through Lebanon for a twelfth day, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan leaves for Rome today for an international meeting aimed at resolving the crisis, expressing hope that concrete measures will emerge from discussions there.

United Nations humanitarian staff in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region cannot reach at least one in five of those in need of assistance because of the ongoing violence and insecurity there, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported today.

The United Nations today launched a $149 million humanitarian appeal for Lebanon covering the next three months and focusing on food, health care, logistics, water and sanitation, protection and common services for an estimated 800,000 people affected by the worsening conflict.

Following last week’s tsunami that killed hundreds of people on the south-central coast of the Indonesian island of Java, the head of a United Nations regional development commission called today for more comprehensive coverage from the warning systems now being developed in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the devastating waves it created.