UN gains access to vital Yemeni aid supplies

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it gained access on Sunday to vital food aid on the outskirts of Yemen’s flashpoint city of Hodeida a month after postponing its mission for security reasons.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting on the side of the government accused the Iran-aligned Huthi rebels of denying a group from the UN agency access to the Red Sea mills warehouse in April. The WFP had said the mission was postponed for “security reasons”.

TECHNICAL TEAM

WFP spokesperson Herve Verhoosel said on Sunday a WFPled mission and a technical team of the Red Sea mills company gained access to the food aid.

“The technical team will remain at the site to clean and service the milling equipment in preparation for the milling and eventual distribution of the wheat,” Verhoosel said.

Before the UN lost access in September, the Red Sea mills held 51,000 tons of grain, enough to feed more than 3.7million people for a month.

In February, a WFP team visited the mills warehouse for the first time since September, when it became inaccessible due to the conflict between progovernment forces and the Huthi rebels.

The WFP said laboratory tests confirmed the wheat had been infested with insects and had to be fumigated. “An assessment carried out following the February 26 mission to the mills concluded that around 70% of the wheat may still be salvageable,” Verhoosel said.

“However, the flour yield will be lower than normal due to the hollow grains [caused by weevil infestation] that will be sifted out during milling.”

He said hot weather was likely to have caused even more deterioration in quality.

This comes after an agreement was struck in Sweden in December, in which Yemeni rivals agreed to redeploy their fighters outside the ports and away from areas that are key to the humanitarian relief effort.

Fighting in Hodeida, whose port serves as the country’s lifeline, has largely stopped since the ceasefire went into effect on December 18, but there have been intermittent clashes.

REDEPLOYMENT

Both the government and the Huthis have been accused of violating the truce deal, while an agreed redeployment of forces has not yet been implemented.

The conflict in Yemen, which has gone on for more than four year, has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, relief agencies say.

The fighting has triggered what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It has left more than 3.3million people displaced and 24.1-million, or more than twothirds of the population, in need of aid.