US working

“The fact that Saudi Arabia is focused on the war against Yemen only benefits the Zionist regime and terrorist groups,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Saturday.

He accused Riyadh of “adventurist actions” and said Iran considers Yemen’s security to be like its own.

Shiite-majority Iran and the Sunniruled Gulf states are also at odds over UN efforts to resume peace negotiations for Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners say the talks must be held in Riyadh, while Iran demands a neutral venue that could also accommodate its Houthi allies.

Kerry said he hoped a solution would be found soon.

“We are having discussions over the course of every day right now in order to push towards this and our hope is that the UN process may be able (to) actually take hold before too long,” he said.

However, fighting raged overnight in southern Yemen as Saudi-led warplanes struck rebel positions, medics and military sources said.

Killed

In second city Aden, dozens of people were killed when a missile hit a rebelheld hospital, while in Yemen’s third largest city Taez, 35 rebels were killed and 62 wounded in an air strike.

Key infrastructure in war-torn Yemen, including water supplies, health services and telecommunications, are on the verge of breaking down due to a major fuel shortage, a United Nations official said Saturday.

“The services still available in the country in terms of health, water, food are quickly disappearing because fuel is no longer being brought into the country,” Johannes van der Klaauw told AFP in Djibouti.

“Without fuel hospitals can’t work, ambulances can’t go out. You can’t have the water system working because water has to be pumped. The telecommunication network risks shutting down. This all extremely preoccupying. If something is not done in the next few days in terms of bringing fuel and food into the country, Yemen is going to come to a complete stand-still,” he warned.

The official said an arms embargo was also having an impact on the delivery of humanitarian supplies.

“We have the ships which can dock into the ports, we have the aircraft. However the arms embargo has unintended consequences for humanitarian aid,” he said, adding that UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon has called for a “humanitarian pause”.

“We must find a way to have this happen. At least for a couple of days.”

At least 1,200 people have been killed in fighting in Yemen since March 19 and thousands more have been wounded. The UN estimates that at least 300,000 people have been displaced by the conflict.

The UN Security Council failed Friday to back a Russian appeal for an immediate ceasefire or humanitarian pauses in war-torn Yemen, where critical fuel shortages threatened relief efforts and doctors described desperate scenes.

Russia requested an urgent meeting of the 15-member council as the Saudi-led air war on Yemen’s Houthi rebels entered a sixth week, crippling deliveries of fuel, food and medicine.

The latest strikes and clashes on the ground killed 47 people in the second city of Aden, where the Red Cross scrambled to evacuate staff and patients from a hospital when it became a front line.

Ban Ki-moon has warned that fuel shortages could bring all relief operations to a halt “within days,” echoing alarm from the International Red Cross and other embattled aid agencies.

During a closed-door council meeting, Russia proposed a draft statement calling for an immediate ceasefire or at least humanitarian pauses, and an urgent return to political negotiations.

But after the statement failed to win endorsement, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said fellow envoys were showing “amazing indecision” in the face of the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Russia’s diplomacy has been greeted with some suspicion given Moscow’s close ties to Iran, which is supporting the Houthi rebels, who have seized the capital Sanaa and forced Yemen’s president into exile.

“If you cannot agree to a motherhoodand-apple-pie statement, what can you agree on? I don’t understand,” a despondent Churkin told reporters.

Diplomats said the Russian statement appealing for action was not rejected out of hand, but that council members needed time to consider the wording.

“There was a strong degree of council agreement on the desperate humanitarian situation in Yemen and need to return to political talks, but no agreement in the room on the exact wording of the statement,” said a diplomat.

The World Food Programme said it was halting food distribution because most stocks of fuel were in rebel hands while the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) raised alarm over the dire plight of doctors and medical workers.

“The surgical team from the ICRC and all local staff and patients were forced to evacuate Aden’s Al-Jumhurriya hospital when the building itself became a front line in the fighting,” the Red Cross said.

The ICRC said hospitals should be spared.