Attacks on aid workers: 350 killed in 2025, and drones a growing concern in 2026

This article rests on statements the UN made around World Humanitarian Day (19 August 2026). The casualty counts come from the Humanitarian Outcomes aid worker database as cited by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). We could not open OCHA's own release or the database, so we rely on UN News and the UN Geneva briefing, and the figures are as of mid-August 2026.

2025: the second-highest toll on record

UN News reports that OCHA counted 907 aid workers as victims of violence in 2025, and that 350 of them were killed, the second-highest toll on record and a fall from the previous year. AFP, via Al-Monitor, carried the same 350 figure on 17 August, under a headline quoting the UN calling the toll unacceptable.

By place, UN News says Gaza was the deadliest context for aid workers for a third year running, with 186 killed, 68% of them in aerial bombardment, despite a ceasefire declared in October 2025. Sudan recorded a record 71 killed, mostly by small-arms fire, the fifth consecutive year of rising fatalities. It also lists Ukraine, Ethiopia, Syria, Haiti, Chad and Cameroon among other high-insecurity contexts, and says kidnapping and aerial bombardment were the most common forms of violence.

2026, as of mid-August

UN News also links to figures for 2026 of 82 aid workers killed, 97 injured and 39 abducted worldwide, while elsewhere the same article gives 322 injured and 235 kidnapped so far this year. It does not explain the difference or date the first count. These are partial-year figures, so it should not be compared with the 2025 total. At the Geneva briefing on 18 August, OCHA's spokesperson said over 1,000 aid workers had been killed in the past three years, a figure the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher repeated: "More than 1,000 aid workers have been killed in just three years and that is utterly unacceptable."

The drone question

Armed drones featured prominently in the UN's messaging this year. OCHA said armed drones caused 80% of civilian deaths in Sudan in the first four months of 2026. It also reported that an aid worker was killed in March 2026 when a drone struck a residential building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and that weaponised drone attacks in Colombia quadrupled between 2024 and 2025. Fletcher said: "The technology may change, but the laws of war do not." At the Geneva briefing OCHA added that it cannot determine the intent of an attacker using drones, but that aid workers were killed either deliberately or recklessly.

Health workers

UN News gives the World Health Organization's count of 639 attacks on health care in 2026, as of mid-August. At the Geneva briefing, a WHO official said a WHO ambulance had been attacked in Bunia, DR Congo, the previous day, and that this was not an isolated incident. The briefing did not say whether anyone was hurt.

Limits of the data

The UN News article is internally unclear about which figures belong to which year, and we have used only the numbers it states unambiguously for 2025. Other counts of aid-worker deaths exist and differ in method. For the current tally, consult the Aid Worker Security Database directly.