UN launches $3b Yemen appeal UNICEF condemns deaths of seven children in Saudi attack
The United Nations asked donors on Tuesday for nearly $3 billion to help an estimated 13 million people who urgently need aid in war-ravaged Yemen. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched the funding drive at a conference in Geneva, aiming to raise $2.96 billion (2.4 billion euros) for this year, AFP reported.
Last year’s Yemen appeal was for $2.5 billion, which was 73 percent funded, but the needs have intensified in a country battered since 2015 by a Saudi-led military offensive aimed at reinstating former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and undermining the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
Riyadh has, however, failed to reach its goals despite suffering great expense.
“Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” Guterres said, calling the situation “catastrophic.”
“But with international support, we can and must prevent this country from becoming a long-term tragedy,” he said.
According to the UN, 8.4 million people are on the verge of famine in Yemen, where food imports are essential to sustain the population.
Saudi Arabia and its allies also shut down the country’s land, sea and air borders last year.
While the coalition says it has eased the blockade, restriction on deliveries persist.
“Humanitarians must be able to reach the people who need help the most, without conditions,” Guterres said.
“All ports must remain open to humanitarian and commercial cargo, the medicine, food and the fuel needed to deliver them,” he added.
‘One of the deadliest attacks on children’
The funding appeal came a day after several children were among those killed in a strike on the port of Hodeidah.
On Monday, the children’s agency UNICEF said in a statement that several children were among those killed in a strike on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah on Monday, calling it “one of the deadliest attacks” on minors in the country for years.
“The United Nations has verified the killing of several children in an attack... in the coastal city of Hodeidah in western Yemen,” UNICEF said.
“Many children are reported missing as the injured and killed are still being pulled out from the rubble.”
On Monday, an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition killed 16 people in the coastal city of Hodeidah.
Medics and a witness who saw the wreckage said the airstrike had destroyed a house in the Hali district, where displaced civilians from other provinces were settled.
The security sources said a second airstrike targeted the house of a Houthi commander in the same area, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Al-masirah news outlet also reported two airstrikes in the Hali district, saying they targeted a camp for displaced people and that most of the victims were women and children. However, security sources claimed there was no camp for the displaced in the area.
An AFP photographer saw children injured from a strike in the area being treated in hospital and medics collecting corpses at the scene.
The coalition is the only force known to carry out airstrikes on Yemen and has previously admitted to “erroneous” strikes that caused civilian casualties.