APRNEWS - An assembly of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) opened in Nairobi Monday under a dark cloud cast by the plane crash that killed 157 people, including 22 United Nations staff, many heading for the annual event.

REUTERS - Harsh weather conditions and tight police border controls have stopped thousands of migrants from attempting to cross into Croatia at the European Union’s Balkan frontier, leaving them stuck in impoverished Bosnia until spring.

REUTERS - More than 700,000 undocumented Afghans have returned from Iran this year as the Iranian economy tightens, with a knock-on effect on the Afghan economy, according to data from the U.N.’s migration agency.

APRNEWS - The UN migration agency says African migrants who were rejected by Italy last week said they had been held by smugglers for up to two years in Libya and many had been beaten, tortured and raped.

REUTERS - An employee of the United Nations’ migration agency was among at least 15 people killed in an attack in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad, the UN said on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s assault on the department of refugee and returnee affairs was the latest in a series of attacks in recent months that have killed and wounded dozens of people.

APRNEWS - Some 400 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa reached Spain Thursday after storming a double barrier between Morocco and the Spanish territory of Ceuta, with some attacking security forces with quicklime, police said.

APRNEWS - At least 46 migrants trying to cross from Somalia to Yemen have drowned when their boat capsized, UN officials say.

Another 16 people are missing after the vessel overturned in rough seas off Yemen’s coast, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.