This is the News in Brief from the United Nations. 

Gaza crisis: humanitarians warn of ‘tragic, entirely avoidable surge’ in child deaths

A “tragic…entirely avoidable surge” in child deaths is expected in Gaza where some 160 youngsters are already being killed every day, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
The warning comes after six weeks of aerial bombardment by Israeli forces in response to the 7 October Hamas terror attacks on southern Israel that claimed 1,200 lives and some 240 hostages.

UN World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told journalists in Geneva that the agency planned to evacuate the remaining 200 patients and 50 health workers from Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

“When these people, the doctors, the nurses, the patients are asked to be evacuated, that's really the last resort. That means that the situation on the ground has grown so dire that the only other alternative is facing what they think certain death.”

Since violence erupted on 7 October, more than 5,350 Palestinian children had reportedly been killed, according to the enclave's health authorities. 

UN Children’s Fund UNICEF warned that without sufficient fuel or water, conditions for children will plummet. The UN agency also added that at least 30 Israeli children are still being held hostage somewhere in Gaza, before appealing for their immediate release.

Afghan nationals face uncertain future after Pakistan eviction order: UNHCR, IOM 

To Pakistan, where the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has expressed concern about the official orders for undocumented foreigners, including Afghan nationals, to leave the country.

Since Pakistan’s announcement of the plan last month, an estimated 374,000 people have returned to Afghanistan – “mostly in fear and haste” according to UNHCR.

The UN agency said that it had seen an exponential increase in arrests, detentions and deportations of Afghans in Pakistan, while the UN migration agency IOM noted that some 17,000 people now cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan today, compared with 200 before the order was issued. 

A large number of these Afghan nationals have never lived in Afghanistan, said IOM spokesperson Itayi Viriri, as he explained that they had been born and raised in Pakistan. 

More than half of those targeted by the order to leave are women and girls who risk not being able to go back to school once they reach Afghanistan, the UN migration agency explained.

Record numbers of Sudan refugees seek shelter from fighting in Chad

The Sudan conflict has forced more than one million people to seek safety in Chad, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

The alert follows more than six months of heavy fighting in Sudan between rival armed forces.

Before the crisis, there were already more than two million people in Chad facing acute food insecurity - including 1.3 million malnourished children.

The situation is likely to worsen, the UN agency warned, as people are increasingly impacted by climate shocks, global fuel shocks, poor harvest and and intercommunal tensions. 

WFP had already had to stop providing assistance to over 200,000 internally displaced persons in the east of Chad, including refugees from the Central African Republic, Cameroon and Nigeria. 

Dianne Penn, UN News.