WHO says Ukraine warehouse destroyed in Kyiv attack

The World Health Organization said one of its main warehouses storing humanitarian medical supplies in Ukraine was destroyed in an air attack in the Kyiv region early Thursday.

The WHO said access to the site remained restricted because of heavy smoke and safety concerns, and that assessments of possible damage and stock losses were still under way. It said no WHO personnel were affected.

The UN health agency said the incident was the third involving a WHO-used warehouse in Ukraine in three months. It said an attack two weeks earlier in Dnipro completely destroyed one of its humanitarian warehouses, causing the loss of half the medical supplies and equipment intended to support an estimated 225,000 people. Another WHO-used warehouse in the Kyiv region was damaged during attacks on Kyiv and the wider region in July, it said.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva that, in his understanding, all WHO and UN locations were deconflicted, meaning their locations were communicated to all sides in the conflict.

The WHO said the attacks were part of a wider pattern affecting humanitarian operations in Ukraine. It said the UN aid agency OCHA had counted at least 20 attacks on warehouses storing humanitarian supplies in 2026, while the WHO had verified 15 attacks on warehouses holding health-related supplies so far this year.

The WHO said it verifies and records attacks on health care but does not attribute blame because it is not an investigation agency. It said it had verified more than 3,000 attacks on health care in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022.