UNICEF: Over 20 Million in Yemen Need Humanitarian Aid
Local Editor
Eighty percent of Yemen’s population, or more than 20 million people, need some form of humanitarian assistance as US-led Saudi airstrikes continue to pound the impoverished country, according to the aid agency UNICEF on Thursday.
The figure is up by almost 5 million people since the organization’s latest report recently last week.
The Deputy Representative of UNICEF, Jeremy Hopkins, said from Yemen’s capital of Sanaa that some "20.4 million people are now estimated to be in need of some form of humanitarian assistance, of whom 9.3 million are children".
"The de facto blockade on Yemen’s ports, though there is some easing, means fuel is not coming into the country, and since pumps are mechanized that means over 20 million people don’t have access to safe water," he further said.
Despite the deteriorating situation in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has been continuing its brutal airstrikes against the impoverished country.
Saudi Arabia has also blocked aid to Yemen.
Additionally, Hopkins said that other urgent humanitarian needs include malnutrition, shortages of medical supplies, mounting civilian casualties in airstrikes, recruitment of child soldiers and damage to schools.
Meanwhile, a local medical official in Aden said dozens of people have died in the city in recent weeks due to a sudden uptick in dengue fever and malaria brought on by the shortage of water and lack of rubbish collection as temperatures soar.
The US-led Saudi military aggression against Yemen started on March 26 -- without a UN mandate -- in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement, and to restore power to Yemen’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a close ally of Saudi Arabia.
