Local Editor
The Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen has given the United Nations permission to resume flights of aid workers to areas controlled by the Houthi movement on Saturday, but not to dock ships with wheat and medical supplies, a U.N. spokesman said.
"After more than two weeks of blockade of these ports, there are various kinds of supplies essential for fighting famine, for fighting cholera and other types of humanitarian threats that millions of people are facing in Yemen today," Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a news briefing on Friday.
The U.S.-backed coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6 to allegedly stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran.
On Wednesday, it said it would allow aid in through the port of Hodeida, as well as U.N. flights to the capital Sana’a, more than two weeks after blockading the country.
For his part, Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, said of the blockade: "In my view this is illegal collective punishment."
Egeland, whose group helps 1 million Yemenis said: "We only have it in writing now and haven't seen it happen."
"Even if both the flights and humanitarian shipments will go through now, it is not solving the underlying crisis that a country that needs 90 percent of its goods imported is not getting in commercial food or fuel," Egeland told Reuters while in Geneva.
The United Nations says some 7 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine and 945,000 have been infected since April with cholera. More than 2,200 people have died.
U.N. officials have submitted requests to the coalition for deliveries via Hodeida and Sana’a.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was vital to get commercial traffic resumed.
"Yemenis will need more than aid in order to survive the crisis and ward off famine," spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
