Shelling of Hodeidah grain stores halts WFP milling

Artillery fire has damaged a mill on the frontline near the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, forcing the World Food Programme to suspended the milling of grain intended for food aid to a starving population, the agency said yesterday. The government’s information minister, Muammar al-Eryani, said the rival Houthi movement had carried out the shelling. There was no comment from Houthi media. The WFP grain stores at the Red Sea Mills have become a focal point of the conflict in Hodeidah, where the United Nations is trying to enforce a ceasefire and troop withdrawal agreed a year ago at Stockholm peace talks. “The milling of WFP wheat at the Red Sea Mills near Hodeidah has been temporarily halted after the mills were hit by artillery fire on Thursday 26 December,” a WFP spokesperson said. The war has severely hit food supplies in Yemen and millions of people are at risk of starvation in what aid agencies describe as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The stores were off limits for around six months and were at risk of rotting until the WFP negotiated access in late February and began cleaning and milling what had been enough grain to feed 3.7mn people for a month. So far just over 2,500 tonnes has been milled into flour and dispatched, the spokesperson said. A statement by a mill official carried by the media office of the Giants Brigade, part of Yemeni government forces, said the shelling put a hole in a grain silo, exposing it to the elements. — Reuters