A tsunami evacuation route sign at a school in Bali. Top stories of the day | Tuesday: Gaza, Lebanon, cities, tsunami UN
Top stories of the day in the UN and around the world: UN mission in Lebanon faces increasing challenges in fulfilling its tasks, seriously ill patients are being evacuated from Gaza, World Urban Forum, World Tsunami Awareness Day.
UN forces in Lebanon
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is clearing rubble and repairing damaged roads to continue operations under the Security Council mandate. Images posted by UNIFIL on social media show large craters left by the bombings. Bulldozers are filling the craters with earth and clearing away the rubble of damaged buildings. The number of people fleeing Lebanon has risen to half a million as violence escalates, with most ending up in Syria.
Gaza: Seriously ill patients prepared for evacuation
More than 100 critically ill patients are to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners, WHO Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Rick Pieperkorn said. Meanwhile, the polio vaccination campaign in the Strip has been extended by one day as WHO staff are trying to reach four densely populated areas they had previously been unable to reach. The WHO reports that about 88 percent of children under 10 were vaccinated in the latest round of the campaign in northern Gaza.
Cities of Peace Report
The new UN-Habitat Cities of Peace 2024 Report, released to coincide with the Cairo Cities Forum, focuses on the looming crisis associated with climate change and rapid urbanization. Poorly managed urban growth, it says, has led to a steady decline in green space in many densely populated areas. The more than two billion people currently living in cities could be exposed to an additional temperature rise of at least 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2040. At the same time, climate action has not yet matched the scale and intensity of the challenges cities face.
Tsunamis
Over the past century, there have been 58 tsunamis on the planet. They have claimed the lives of more than 260,000 people. On average, each of these disasters killed 4,600 people – more than any other natural disaster. The deadliest was the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, which killed 227,000 people in 14 countries. The countries most affected were Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, the UN recalled on the occasion of World Tsunami Awareness Day, which is celebrated on November 5.