Fuel Shortages Threaten Yemen Relief Efforts: UN Chief
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that dire fuel shortages in Yemen were threatening to bring all relief operations to a halt "within days" and said deliveries should resume immediately.
"Humanitarian operations will end within days unless fuel supplies are restored," Ban said in a statement on Thursday.
The UN chief called for an "immediate resumption of fuel imports to avoid making the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Yemen even worse."
The World Food Program (WFP) said earlier that it was halting its food distribution in Yemen due to the severe fuel shortage.
The agency is in urgent need of more than 200,000 liters of fuel to be able to continue distributing food supplies already in its warehouses, stocks that can feed 1.5 million people for one month, AFP reported.
On March 26, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies began to launch deadly air strikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
The violence has severely blocked shipments of food, fuel and medicine.
All airports are closed to civilian traffic and naval shipments are being delayed.
Ban repeated his call for an immediate ceasefire and said, short of that, there should be humanitarian pauses in areas affected by the fighting.
