Yemen blockade to be eased
GENEVA — The Saudi-led coalition that has imposed an air, sea and land blockade on war-battered Yemen since Nov. 6 has authorized the resumption of UN flights to the Yemeni capital starting Saturday, a UN aid official said.
The planned resumption of UN passenger flights from the Jordanian capital, Amman, to Sanaa, Yemen, is set to come two days after the western-backed coalition had originally planned to reopen access to the country.
“We have been notified through our usual contacts with the coalition in Riyadh that the regular passenger flights operated by (the UN Humanitarian Air Service) can fly tomorrow to Sanaa from Amman starting tomorrow,” said spokesman Jens Laerke of the UN humanitarian aid co-ordination agency OCHA at UN briefing in Geneva on Friday.
He said the opening “may be followed soon by clearances of flights from Djibouti to Sanaa.”
The Saudi-led coalition has come under almost daily pressure and expressions of concern from UN officials, some governments and advocacy groups who fear an already dire situation in a country largely depending on aid from abroad will worsen.
The piecemeal lifting of the blockade for passenger flights is unlikely to have much impact.
“One flight from Amman to Sanaa is not going to change the overall picture all that much,” Laerke said. “What really matters is (1) that the resumption of these flights becomes sustainable and, secondly, that we can get the ports in Hodeida and Saleef open both for humanitarian aid and for commercial imports.”
It was not clear what items might be on the passenger flight.
“Thankfully we are starting to see some movement” in opening the blockade, Laerke said, before adding that the UN has seen “no substantial change” in its efforts to reach Yemen by sea.
UN officials say Yemen is facing the world’s largest cholera outbreak, near-famine conditions in some places, and a severe breakdown in the health -are system in what was already the Arab world’s poorest country — adding up to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Yemenis have endured an intensified tw-and-a-half-year war involving a Shiite rebel group, known as the Houthis, which controls many population centres in western Yemen and an internationally recognized government that has backing of Saudi Arabia and several other key Persian Gulf states.