Local Editor
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) plans to send a test shipment of rice to Yemen this month in its first attempt since February to deliver food aid via the port of Hodeida.
The port has been repeatedly hit by air strikes from a Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting in Yemen since 2015 to try to restore resigned Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. It normally handles some 80 percent of Yemen's food supplies as well as humanitarian aid,
"A certain number of maritime companies are starting to use Hodeida port," ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said. "We are going to test the waters, so to speak, and send a cargo of rice from Pakistan."
The shipment is due to leave Pakistan on Thursday and should arrive in the beginning of September, she said.
The ICRC suspended stopped using Hodeida port in February. Jaquemet said it had been bringing in supplies to Yemen by land from Jordan via Saudi Arabia and Oman.
The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced at least 2 million and destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, including roads, hospitals and schools, pushing Yemen to the brink of famine. It has also fanned the spread of cholera, infecting some half a million people and killing nearly 2,000.
The chairman of the board of Red Sea ports, which includes Hodeida, said on Wednesday that the Saudi-led coalition in January had stopped the delivery of four mobile cranes organized by the World Food Program (WFP) to replace cranes destroyed by the coalition last year.
The WFP confirmed the report and said the cranes, which were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were sent back to Dubai after waiting offshore for more than a week.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
