Yemen in chaos over little gas, food, water
SANAA, Yemen — Hamoud al-Harazi’s brush with death happened while he was trying to buy gasoline. On his fifth day waiting at a filling station in Yemen’s capital, a fight erupted when armed men in a Toyota pickup tried to cut in at the front of the kilometre-long line.
They began trading gunfire with other frustrated motorists, prompting Harazi to run for his life, he said.
“It’s come to the point that we in Yemen may die just trying to get gas,” said Harazi, a minibus driver who lives in Sanaa.
Intense fighting, involving Shiite rebels and a Saudiled military force, is starving Yemen of gasoline, leaving residents unable to drive to supermarkets or shuttle wounded people to hospitals. Citizens also are increasingly unable to flee bombing raids that have killed scores of civilians.
Ships carrying oil and other products have been unable to reach Yemeni ports, which have been blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition, according to local officials, aid organizations and the United Nations.
Exacerbating the problem, Yemen’s own oil infrastructure has been damaged by fighting and the airstrikes by the Saudiled coalition that began more than three weeks ago. Roads and bridges have been damaged.
Truckers are reluctant to transport goods, such as gasoline and food, because of the rising price of fuel and the risk of attacks en route.
The shortages are intensifying a humanitarian crisis in an Arabian Peninsula country that already was struggling with grinding poverty before a conflict between the government and the rebels, known as the Houthis, exploded into war.
Saudi Arabia and several allies have carried out air raids in Yemen to support the ousted president and to halt the advances by the Houthis.
“The fuel crisis is a critical driver of the emerging humanitarian disaster,” said April Longley Alley, a Dubai-based analyst focusing on Yemen at the International Crisis Group.