‘U.N. AID NOT GETTING INTO YEMEN’
Saudi-led coalition must lift blockade of all ports, says UN spokesman
THE Saudi-led coalition is still blocking desperately-needed United Nations aid deliveries to Yemen despite the reopening of the port of Aden and of a land border crossing, a UN spokesman said on Friday.
“Humanitarian movements into Yemen remain blocked,” said Russell Geekie, spokesman for the UN office of humanitarian aid (Ocha).
“The reopening of the port in Aden is not enough. We need to see the blockade of all the ports lifted, especially Hodeida, for both humanitarians and for commercial imports.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund representative in the country Meritxell Relano said on Friday that Yemen’s stocks of fuel and vaccines would run out in a month unless aid was allowed into the port of Hodeidah and Sanaa airport.
The coalition shut down Yemen’s borders last Monday in response to a missile attack by Houthi rebels that was intercepted near the Riyadh airport.
UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council this week that unless the blockade was lifted, Yemen would face “the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims”.
After an outcry from the UN, the coalition on Wednesday reopened Aden, controlled by pro-Saudi government forces, and on Thursday opened the land crossing at Wadea on the Saudi-Yemen border.
But Geekie said no aid had gone into Aden yet and the reopening of the Wadea crossing did not impact UN operations.
Before the blockade, UN aid agencies were delivering food and medicine through Hodeida, Saleef and Aden ports.
“There can be no alternative for all these ports being fully functional and receiving commercial and humanitarian cargo,” added Geekie.
UN has listed Yemen as the world’s No. 1 humanitarian crisis, with 17 million people in need of food, seven million of whom are at risk of famine.
More than 2,000 Yemenis have died in a cholera outbreak affecting nearly one million people.
Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in neighbouring Yemen in March 2015 to push back the Iran-backed Houthi rebels which controls the capital Sanaa and restore the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to power. Agencies