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A senior UN official on Wednesday urged the Security Council to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages, warning that the war has become “a nightmare of historic proportions” and it is “long past time” for the fighting to end and for hostages to return home.

Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, told ministers and ambassadors that ongoing talks must lead to a permanent end to hostilities, the release of all hostages, unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid and for recovery and reconstruction to begin.

A second convoy from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) reached battered Sweida on Wednesday, the UN Office for the Coordinating of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in its latest update. 

Deadly sectarian violence has displaced more than 145,000 people in the southern city, some of whom have fled to neighbouring Dar’a and Rural Damascus governorates. 

The convoy carried a range of critical support, including food, wheat flour, fuel, medicines and health supplies. 

The United States announced on Tuesday that it will leave the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which will take effect at the end of December 2026. 

UN Secretary‑General António Guterres declared the world has “passed the point of no return” on the shift to renewables and implored governments to file sweeping new climate plans before November’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil, saying the fossil fuel era is nearing its end.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has strongly condemned the Israeli strike on Thursday that hit the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip. 

Three people were killed and at least 10 others were injured in the bombing of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, according to media reports.

A surge in sectarian violence in southern Syria and Israeli airstrikes reaching central Damascus have pushed the war‑scarred country into a volatile juncture, a senior UN official said on Thursday, warning that renewed violence could shatter prospects for peace and fuel wider regional instability.

The Druze-majority Sweida governorate, long relatively insulated from earlier phases of Syria’s 14‑year conflict, has now become a flashpoint.

The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) reported mass displacement in Swedia, Syria after five days of sectarian violence between Bedouin tribal fighters, government forces and Druze militias. 

Conditions in Gaza have reached an unspeakable level of devastation with children paying the highest price, top UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday, warning of soaring child deaths, starvation and a shattered health system amid continuing bombardment and displacement.

Tom Fletcher, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said there was no “vocabulary” left to adequately describe conditions on the ground.

Clashes between Bedouin tribal fighters, caretaker government forces and Druze militias stretched into their fourth day in Sweida on Wednesday while Israeli forces struck the Syrian capital, Damascus. 

News reports estimate that the sectarian violence in the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, south of the capital, has killed more than 200.

Nearly 900 desperate and hungry Gazans have been killed in recent weeks trying to fetch food, with most deaths linked to private aid hubs run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.