UN ‘Extremely Concerned’ Over Possible Saudi Attack on Yemen’s Hudaydah
Local Editor
The United Nations warned against a possible military action against Yemen's port city of Hudaydah, where over 70 percent of the nation's food imports and relief aid is delivered.
During a Friday panel discussion on Yemeni crisis at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said he was "extremely concerned" over a potential military operation on the vital Saudi port.
"We as the United Nations are advocating that no military operations should be undertaken in Hudaydah," Ahmed said.
The warning comes days after the Saudi-led coalition, which has been engaged in a deadly military campaign against Yemen over the past two years, threatened to attack Yemen's western port city.
Hudaydah is part of a broad battlefront where Saudi-backed forces are fighting the Yemeni army and its Ansarullah revolutionary allies, which control most of northern and western Yemen.
Meanwhile, recent reports said Washington is considering a more assertive role in the war on Yemen by providing more assistance to the Riyadh-led military alliance to conduct an operation in Hudaydah aimed at removing the Ansarullah revolutionaries and allied army and popular forces.
The previous US administration, which had been wary of operations involving the port, rejected a proposal by the Saudi Kingdom last year to assist a push to take control of the Red Sea port near the Bab al-Mandab strait, through which nearly 4 million barrels of oil are shipped daily.
The UN envoy further warned that any military action in the area would "need to take into account the need to avoid any further deterioration in the humanitarian situation."
Despite repeated assaults and heavy bombardments, Saudi Arabia failed to wrest control of the strategic port. On March 19, Riyadh called for jurisdiction over Hudaydah to be transferred to the UN.
The world body, however, flatly rejected the call.
Saudi Arabia launched a massive aerial aggression against neighboring Yemen on March 26, 2015, backed by a number of African and Gulf states, in an attempt to reinstate former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a close ally of the despotic kingdom, and to crush the popular Ansarullah revolutionary movement.
The offensive has so far left over 12,000 Yemeni civilians dead, according to the latest tallies.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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