An overnight airstrike between Thursday and Friday has damaged a World Health Organisation (WHO) warehouse in Ukraine for storing humanitarian medical supplies in the Kyiv region.
The medical supplies are for people living in frontline and hard-to-reach areas.
The United Nations (UN) in a statement on Friday noted that the WHO said the attack, which is the third against its storage facility in the last three months, recorded no casualty on any of its personnel.
The WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told journalists in Geneva, Switzerland, that “Yesterday, overnight, between 3 and 4 September, an air attack in Kyiv affected one of WHO’s main warehouses, storing humanitarian medical needs and supplies.
He said, “The access to the site remained restricted due to heavy smoke and safety concerns, while assessments of possible damage and stock losses are ongoing.”
According to the UN, an attack two weeks ago, destroyed a WHO humanitarian warehouse in Dnipro, resulting in the loss of half of the medical supplies and equipment intended to support an estimated 225,000 people living in the frontline and hard-to-reach areas.
Mr Lindmeier stated, “Another warehouse used by WHO in Kyiv oblast was damaged during a large-scale wave of attacks on Kyiv and the region in July.”
He added that attacks on warehouses storing supplies could delay or disrupt the delivery of essential health support to people who needed it most.
“The attacks are part of a broader pattern affecting humanitarian operations across the country. In 2026, at least 20 attacks have affected warehouses storing humanitarian supplies, including 15 attacks on warehouses holding health-related humanitarian supplies,” Mr. Lindmeier said.
He stressed that the locations of United Nations and WHO facilities and warehouses were known to parties to the conflict as they were communicated through established deconfliction arrangements.
“In my understanding, all warehouses, all UN locations, all WHO locations, are de-conflicted. That means the whereabouts are communicated to all sides of the conflict, and that is well known,” he stated.
The UN stated that the global health agency would however, keep working with health partners across Ukraine to ensure that essential medical supplies reach health facilities and communities in need.
He assured that alternative storage arrangements had already been identified, and efforts underway to assess the damage and replace lost supplies.
The UN stated that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the WHO had confirmed attacks on over 3,000 facilities, including health facilities, ambulances, medical supplies and warehouses.
