The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that a humanitarian operation was launched on Tuesday to deliver assistance to previously inaccessible areas of Afghanistan's eastern Nuristan province. Ongoing armed conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan has left thousands in these communities without access to basic supplies and essential services for more than seven weeks. Meanwhile, cross-border mortar shelling continues.
The multi-day operation, coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Afghanistan, aims to deliver urgently needed assistance to communities in previously inaccessible areas of eastern Nuristan Province.
Around 136,000 people in the districts of Kamdesh and Barg-e-Matal have been cut off from food, healthcare, and basic supplies for two months due to insecurity and restricted access. Following extensive negotiations with all parties to the conflict, aid agencies have begun delivering food, medical supplies and other essential items to those in desperate need.
While the reopening of access routes is allowing markets to recover and medical evacuations to resume, OCHA emphasizes that needs remain high, particularly for food, healthcare, and basic services. The UN and its humanitarian partners continue to call for safe, sustained, and unimpeded access in line with humanitarian principles.
These deliveries are taking place amid ongoing reports of cross-border mortar shelling between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In recent days, shelling has reportedly damaged a school, a health facility and a telecommunications tower in Dangam district, Kunar province.
Since late February, cross-border hostilities, including shelling, airstrikes and clashes, between Afghanistan and Pakistan have led to an increase in humanitarian needs in Afghanistan. Civilian infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, including hundreds of homes and dozens of health facilities and schools. There have been hundreds of civilian casualties, including children and one aid worker.
So far, the violence has displaced more than 115,000 people across the provinces of Khost, Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Paktika and Nuristan. Aid agencies warn that safety concerns remain high, including explosive hazards and gender-based violence. On Tuesday, OCHA reiterated that civilians and civilian infrastructure, including schools and health facilities, must be protected and that all parties must uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law.
The latest escalation in violence comes amid years of conflict and poverty, as well as natural disasters such as droughts and earthquakes, which have left nearly half of Afghanistan's population — almost 22 million people — in need of humanitarian assistance. Over 11.6 million of those in need are children.
Since 2023, Afghanistan has seen huge numbers of its citizens — estimated at 2.9 million in 2025 — forced to return from neighboring countries, including Pakistan and Iran. Millions of Afghans live in extreme poverty, lacking adequate food, clean water, and access to education, healthcare, and employment.
Since early April, reported crossings from Iran and Pakistan have risen to over 190,000 amid the US-Israeli war on Iran and the ongoing escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, putting further strain on border provinces and urban centers that are already under immense pressure.
The severe humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is fueled by worsening food insecurity, armed conflict, recurring climate-driven shocks, large-scale influxes of returnees, frequent earthquakes, multiple disease outbreaks, and severe protection risks, especially for women and girls.
Afghanistan is experiencing immense levels of hunger and malnutrition. While millions face food insecurity, nearly 70 percent of Afghans depend on climate-sensitive agriculture for their livelihoods.
According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, an estimated 17.4 million people — over a third of the population — faced crisis levels of hunger (IPC Phase 3) or worse between November 2025 and March 2026. This included 4.7 million people facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC Phase 4).
Coinciding with the harvest season, the situation is expected to improve somewhat between April and September 2026. The number of people facing IPC Phase 3 or worse conditions is projected to fall to approximately 13.8 million, including 2.9 million facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC Phase 4).
At the same time, Afghanistan remains on the front line of the global climate crisis and is heavily impacted by recurring disasters, such as droughts and floods. Ranked among the world’s most vulnerable and least prepared countries to manage the impacts of climate change, Afghan communities are already experiencing severe consequences.
In recent weeks, flooding has affected more than 73,000 people across 31 provinces in Afghanistan. Flash floods, heavy rainfall, and landslides have resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries and have destroyed thousands of houses. Critical infrastructure has been damaged, including hundreds of kilometers of vital roads and multiple bridges, in addition to vast swathes of agricultural land.
Humanitarian organizations have scaled up their immediate response efforts in the aftermath of the recent rains and floods that impacted most of the country.
Afghanistan is also highly susceptible to seismic events. In August 2025, a powerful earthquake, one of the deadliest in Afghanistan in recent years, struck eastern Afghanistan. The earthquake devastated communities across Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. With a magnitude exceeding 6.0, the earthquake and its aftershocks destroyed homes, damaged infrastructure, and claimed more than 2,150 lives.
Eight months later, the disaster has largely faded from global headlines, but for many survivors, the struggle continues. Across the mountainous districts of Kunar and the plains of Nangarhar, entire communities are still trying to recover. Nearly half a million people were affected, and more than 200,000 are still in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
The UN emphasizes that more funding is urgently needed to facilitate humanitarian operations across the country. As of today, only 13 percent — or US$220 million — of the $1.7 billion required to implement this year's Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan, which aims to assist 17.5 million people, has been received.