The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Afghanistan on Monday welcomed a $2.2 million contribution from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) which will provide critical aid to Afghan women and children.

According to a statement issued by the WFP, this contribution will provide over 550 metric tons of specialized nutritious food to 125,000 Afghan mothers and children for three months to prevent malnutrition.

“This year, in Afghanistan, 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are suffering from malnutrition while 3.5 million young children are expected to be malnourished, the sharpest surge in malnutrition ever recorded in the country,” said Mutinta Chimuka, WFP Country Director in Afghanistan.

“It is critical to support mothers and their young children to stay healthy and well-nourished, for their own futures and that of their families,”Mutinta said.

Last year, WFP supported over 2.3 million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and young children with specialized nutritious food to prevent them from falling into malnutrition.

They received ready to use fortified supplementary food, enriched with protein and vitamins, helping them become healthy again. Of those assisted, over 1.5 million were children and nearly 800,000 were Afghan mothers.

WFP is often the last lifeline for women and girls in Afghanistan. Two-thirds of women-headed households cannot afford basic nutrition – a rate nearly 20 percent higher than that of men-headed families. In 2024, WFP reached nearly 12 million people in Afghanistan through all activities, more than half of them were women and girls.

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) has meanwhile been a steadfast partner in supporting WFP operations in Afghanistan. Between 2021 and 2024, SIDA’s contributions exceeded $30 million, ranking among WFP’s top ten donors in the country in 2025.

Azerbaijan’s State Security Service (SSS) hosted an international conference on  “Afghanistan: Regional Connectivity, Security, and Development”, which brought together intelligence officials from 20 countries. 

The event, held in Baku, was opened by the head of Azerbaijan’s SSS, Colonel-General Ali Naghiyev, who noted the importance of the event and said it was extremely important for the world to provide comprehensive support to Afghanistan. 

He expressed hope that the event would “make a significant contribution to the establishment of a centralised state in Afghanistan, adhering to the norms and principles of international law”.

Speaking about the longstanding Azerbaijan-Afghanistan relations, built on mutual trust, as well as the deep historical and cultural ties between the two countries, Naghiyev noted that Azerbaijan has always supported international initiatives aimed at ensuring internal political stability and security in Afghanistan and has never spared efforts in this direction.

Naghiyev also emphasised the need for comprehensive support from countries around the world for Afghanistan in its fight against transnational organised crime, including international terrorism, drug trafficking, and illegal migration.

Highlighting that one of the main goals of the event was to develop a unified stance on preventing destructive attempts by sabotage forces and terrorist groups interested in maintaining the tense situation in Afghanistan, the head of the SSS noted the importance of ensuring that Afghanistan takes its rightful place in the international system, with peace being established in the country. 

He expressed confidence that the countries of the region and other states would act in coordination and make joint efforts toward this goal.

Other intelligence officials also addressed participants and noted that such meetings would lead to serious steps being taken to ensure peace and security in Afghanistan. 

Corpses covered in dust and debris were scattered in the wreckage of a detention centre for African migrants in Yemen, after what Houthi-controlled television described on Monday as a U.S. airstrike that killed 68 people.

The attack was one of the deadliest so far in six weeks of intensified U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis, an Iran-aligned group that controls northern Yemen and has struck shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is solidarity with the Palestinians.

A U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. military was aware of the claims of civilian casualties.

“We take those claims very seriously. We are currently conducting our battle-damage assessment and inquiry into those claims,” the U.S. official said.

The U.S. military has said it will not give detailed information about targets of its airstrikes for reasons of operational security.

Houthi-run Al Masirah television showed images of the aftermath of the strike in Saada, on a route used by African migrants to cross impoverished, conflict-riven Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia.

The footage showed bodies covered in dust amid blood-stained rubble. Rescue workers carried a man who was moving slightly on a stretcher. A survivor could be heard calling “My mother” in Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia.

Other survivors interviewed by Yemeni television in hospital described being awakened by the dawn blast. “I was thrown into the air and fell to the ground,” one said.

The American administration had committed a “brutal crime” by bombing the Saada detention centre which held more than 100 undocumented African migrants, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said on X.

The group vowed to continue its attacks on Red Sea shipping in a statement from its military spokesman Yahya Saree.

Reuters was able to verify the location and timing of the aftermath video through visible landmarks, such as a warehouse-like building with a shredded corrugated roof. Satellite images of the same location the previous day had shown the roof intact.

The location matched that of a migrant centre that had also been hit in a previous Saudi-led airstrike in 2022.

“It is unthinkable that while people are detained and have nowhere to escape, they can also be caught in the line of fire,” Christine Cipolla, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ delegation in Yemen, said.

The deadliest U.S. strike on Yemen so far came this month with an attack on a fuel terminal on the Red Sea that killed at least 74 people.

The U.S. military has said it has struck more than 800 targets since the current operation in Yemen, known as Operation Rough Rider, started on March 15. The strikes, the U.S. military said, have killed “hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders.”

On Monday, the U.S. Navy said that an F-18 aircraft and its tow tractor fell off the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier, which has been aiding strikes in Yemen from the Red Sea.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that initial reports were that the Truman made a hard turn because of a Houthi attack in the vicinity, but it was unclear if that had caused the F-18 to fall overboard. The Houthis have regularly attacked U.S. warships in the area, but none have been successful.

The Houthis said in an earlier statement on Monday that they targeted the aircraft carrier and its associated warships in response to what the group described as the U.S. massacres against civilians.

Rights advocates have raised concerns about civilian killings. Three Democratic senators wrote to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Thursday demanding an accounting for loss of civilian lives.

“Strikes pose a growing risk to the civilian population in Yemen,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Monday. “We continue to call on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians.”

A civil war in Yemen has raged for a decade between the Houthis and a government that controls the south, backed by Arab states, although fighting had eased for the past two years following a truce between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.

Hundreds of thousands of people seeking to escape poverty travel each year through the Horn of Africa and across the Red Sea to journey by foot through Yemen to the Saudi border, aid agency officials say.

More than 500 people drowned crossing the Red Sea last year as they tried to reach Yemen, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency.

The Yemeni-Saudi border, which stretches west to east across a humid coastal plain, rugged scrub-covered mountains and high desert dunes, was an active frontline in the war for years and remained dangerous even after the truce paused major fighting.

Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that Saudi border guards had used explosive weapons and gunfire to kill hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, including women and children, trying to cross the border. A Saudi official rejected that report.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has tried for years to reduce the number of undocumented migrants entering and working there, often in low-paid jobs. U.N. studies have shown it is home to an estimated 750,000 Ethiopians.