Local Editor
A fire on the edge of the Yemeni port city of Hodeida has reportedly damaged two food silos, the UN said Friday, adding it appeared a mortar shell hit storage facilities.
"We are very concerned that some of our wheat stocks at the Red Sea Mills have been damaged," said the UN World Food Program's Yemen director Stephen Anderson, quoted in a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The WFP has 51,000 metric tons of wheat stored at the Red Sea Mills site on Hodeida's outskirts, but has been unable to access the site since September last year, due to fighting, the statement said.
Forces loyal to the resigned Yemeni regime of former President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, supported by a regional coalition that includes Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have battled to the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement from the lifeline port city.
UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden last month brought about a fragile truce for Hodeida.
"WFP urgently needs to get access to the Red Sea Mills so we can assess the level of damage and begin transporting the unaffected wheat stocks to areas of Yemen where it is desperately needed," Anderson added.
The UN agency's stores at the facility represent a quarter of its wheat stock in the country -- enough to feed 3.7 million people for a month -- the OCHA statement said.
Yemen's war has pushed 14 million people to the brink of famine in what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"The situation in Yemen is heart-breaking," said UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen Lise Grande, in the statement.
"A quarter of a million people are in a catastrophic condition, facing near starvation if assistance doesn’t get to them. We need this wheat," she added.
Yemen's conflict has killed some 10,000 people since the Saudi-led military coalition intervened to support the government in March 2015, according to the World Health Organization.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
