Lise Grande

Aid organizations are making an urgent plea for funding to shore up their operations in war-torn Yemen, saying they have already been forced to stop some of their work even as the coronavirus rips through the country.

The UN has condemned recent airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians in the northern Yemeni province of Al-Jawf.

Houthi rebels said 31 people were killed and 12 others injured in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Al-Jawf.

The group said the attacks targeted civilians checking the wreckage of a Tornado fighter jet downed by Houthis a day earlier in the province.

More than five million Iraqis have been displaced since so-called Islamic State (IS) took over large swathes of territory in 2014, the UN says, quoted by BBC. 

Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, said 5.4 million civilians had fled their homes over the past three years.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed three suicide car bombs that killed at least 15 civilians and eight Iraqi policemen on Dec. 22 in an eastern suburb of Mosul, according to a military statement. 

The attacks targeted Kokjali, a suburb that the authorities said they had retaken from the jihadists almost two months ago. 

Up to 500,000 civilians in Mosul face a "catastrophic" drinking water shortage as Iraqi forces advance on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the city, the United Nations warned on Nov. 30.

Europe's Security Commissioner Julian King Tuesday warned that the European Union must brace itself for an influx of radical jihadists if Iraqi forces wrest back Mosul, a stronghold of the so-called Islamic State.

"The retaking of the IS northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent IS fighters," King told Die Welt in remarks published Tuesday.

Explosives planted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have killed dozens of Iraqi civilians who returned to Ramadi despite warnings that much of the western city remains unsafe nearly four months after its recapture from the militants. 

The United Nations said March 17 that it was concerned that many of the 35,000 people recently displaced by fighting in Iraq's Anbar province were still very close to the front lines.

Thousands of civilians have been fleeing Hit, 145 kilometers west of Baghdad, as security forces close in on fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) hunkered down in the city.

More than 90,000 people have fled their homes in Iraq's western province of Anbar where Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants have been gaining ground over the past week, the United Nations said on April 19.

ISIL militants have encroached on the provincial capital Ramadi, displacing thousands of families.