‘Worse to come’ says UN as Yemen fighting intensifies
HEAVY fighting between Houthi Shiite rebels and forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition has killed more than 150 people in the last four days, Yemeni officials said.
Ground troops supported by the coalition and backed by the UAE have been trying to seize Houthi-held areas along the west coast, while Saudi-led airstrikes have been targeting rebel forces in the north-western Saada province, a rebel stronghold.
The offensive is being waged by ground troops carrying sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired missiles, officials said. A Saudi-led airstrike near a petrol station in the capital, Sanaa, killed four civilians on Saturday and wounded 10.
In March, an international rights group said fighting along Yemen’s west coast has displaced 100,000 people in recent months, mostly from the Red Sea port city of Hodeida. Amnesty International warned the “the worst could be yet to come”.
The port is a vital lifeline through which comes most of the country’s food and medicine.
The coalition accuses Houthi rebels of using Hodeida to receive arms and ammunition from Iran, which denies arming the Houthis and helping them take power in Yemen, which has been embroiled in a war since March 2015 as the Saudi-led coalition bids to remove the Houthis from power.
The coalition aims to restore the government of the exiled president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
The three-year war has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than three million Yemenis.
The World Health Organisation says upwards of 55,000 people have been wounded in the war.
Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights has put the total casualty count from the war at 600,000.
It has also damaged Yemen’s infrastructure, crippled its health system and pushed its people to the brink of famine.
The UN considers Yemen to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance.
Malnutrition, cholera and other diseases have killed or sickened thousands of civilians over the years.
Mark Lowcock, the UN’S humanitarian affairs chief, said last Thursday that “some 8.4 million people are severely food insecure and at risk of starvation” in Yemen.
“If conditions do not improve, a further 10 million people will fall into this category by the end of the year,” he warned.