Local Editor
Yemen said it has sent a maintenance team to repair an aging oil tanker laden with more than 1 million barrels that the United Nations and environmental groups see as a threat to marine life in the Red Sea.
The decaying vessel Safer has been moored off Hodiedah province since 1988. The crude, worth some $40 million at today’s prices of around $40 a barrel, was on board when the war broke out in Yemen in 2015.
However, the Saudi Arabian-led coalition waging the war has blocked access to necessary equipment which might cause the failure of the repair team to prevent the Safer from leaking oil.
The conflict in Yemen has caused severe hunger, an outbreak of deadly cholera, and -- in the words of the UN -- “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time.”
An oil spill from the Safer could destroy the livelihoods of 126,000 fishermen, according to a statement posted last month on the Yemen-based website Holm Akhdar. Some 850,000 tons of fish in the Red Sea, the Bab El Mandab waterway, and the Gulf of Aden could perish, it said.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
