Geneva - Nearly two months after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe declared that the cholera outbreak in his country had been "arrested" the number of dead continues to climb, passing 3,000 this week, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

As of Tuesday, 3,028 people had died and 57,702 become infected with the waterborne diarrhoeal disease.

That's 273 more dead and 9,079 more cases of infection than the last OCHA update six days ago.

Geneva - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) began Monday the distribution of aid material to around 8,000 families in the Gaza Strip following the cessation of military activity there, a spokeswoman said in Geneva.

The Red Cross is now providing cooking utensils, tarpaulins, hygiene articles and blankets for families that lost their homes in the three-week Israeli military offensive, said spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas.

Access to the families in the worst-affected parts of Gaza was proving difficult, with many houses completely destroyed or heavily damaged. Unexploded ordnance was also proving a particular hazard.

Geneva/Harare - Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has continued its rapid spread, with the death toll at 2,225 as of Friday, the United Nations said in Geneva.

According to the agency, 42,675 people have been infected with the waterborne disease. On Wednesday, the toll stood at 2,106 dead and 40,448 infected.

The epidemic was being fuelled by a lack of clean drinking water and chronic shortages of food and other essentials in the country, which is facing its worst-ever economic and humanitarian crisis.

Geneva - A specialist medical team from the International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to enter the Gaza Strip for the past three days, a spokeswoman for the organization said Sunday.

The team, comprised of two doctors and two nurses, was supposed to enter the enclave on Friday to help the local Palestinian medical staff, who were "exhausted" and having trouble coping with the massive influx of injured people, she said.

Many of the wounds were complicated, requiring outside medical expertise, the spokeswoman said. The team was "badly needed" and their presence in Gaza was "essential."

Geneva  - In July, employees at a Geneva hotel decided to call the police to complain about the treatment of two servants at the hands of their foreign bosses, setting in motion a chain of events that would cast a dark cloud over Switzerland's relations with Libya.

The foreign bosses who were allegedly beating their servants were Hannibal, 32, and his pregnant wife, the son and daughter-in-law of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Geneva - The ongoing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has caused the displacement of over 250,000 people, has put children at particular risk of recruitment into armed groups, the UN's Children Fund said Wednesday.

UNICEF called on "all armed groups to end the recruitment and use of children," Pierrette Vu Thi, the agency's chief in the DR Congo, said in a statement. They must "immediately release the children within their ranks."