Humanitarian groups on Wednesday demanded access to civilians on the brink of famine in Yemen, describing the two-year Saudi-led war in the Arab world’s poorest state as an “open-air massacre”.
“The bombs that rain down every day in Yemen show an absolute disdain for civilian life,” Jean-Pierre Delomier of Handicap International said in a joint statement with five other aid groups.
“Every day our teams, when they manage to reach people, see the physical and psychological distress of the traumatised civilians,” he added. “This open-air massacre is intolerable and unworthy or our era.”
Some 19 million people, or 60 percent of the population, face food insecurity including three million women and children who are suffering severe malnutrition, the six groups said.
Helene Queau of Premiere Urgence Internationale told a Paris news conference that Yemen was “one of the countries… where humanitarian groups have the most difficulties.”
Transport infrastructure is “partially or totally destroyed, access to airports and ports is very complicated, and bombing by the Arab coalition restricts movements,” said Queau, the group’s operations chief.
The presence of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses an additional security risk, she said.
Yemen has been since March 26, 2015 under brutal aggression by Saudi-led coalition.
Thousands have been martyred and injured in the attack, with the vast majority of them are civilians.
Riyadh launched the attack on Yemen in a bid to restore power to fugitive ex-president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi who is a close ally to Saudi Arabia.
Source: Websites
