UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths was yesterday in the rebel-controlled Yemeni capital for a second day to hold emergency talks over the key aid port of Hodeida, where a regional coalition is battling Houthi rebel fighters.
Griffiths was believed to be pushing a deal for rebel leaders to cede control of the Red Sea port to a UN-supervised committee and halt heavy clashes against advancing government troops backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The envoy did not make any statement on his arrival at Sana’a International Airport on Saturday.
Photo: AFP
Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said on Twitter he backed “the envoy’s efforts to facilitate the safe handover of Hodeida to the legitimate Yemeni Government.”
“The people of Hodeida urgently want to be liberated. The coalition will continue with its military and humanitarian preparations to achieve this urgent result,” he wrote.
More than 70 percent of Yemeni imports pass through Hodeida’s docks and the fighting has raised fears of humanitarian catastrophe in a country already teetering on the brink of famine.
The Yemeni government and its allies launched their offensive on Wednesday. At least 139 combatants have since been killed, medical and military sources reported.
The Shiite Houthi rebels have controlled the Hodeida region with its population of about 600,000 people since 2014.
Earlier this year, the Saudi-led coalition imposed a near-total blockade on the city’s port, alleging that it was being used as a conduit for arms smuggling to the rebels by its regional archrival Iran.
The capture of Hodeida would be the coalition’s biggest victory in the war so far and rebel leader Abdel Malek al-Houthi on Thursday called on his forces to put up fierce resistance and turn the region into a quagmire for coalition troops.
The Republic of Yemen Armed Forces on Saturday said it had seized control of the rebel base at Hodeida’s disused airport, which has been closed since 2014.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent on the front line could not confirm the report and a spokesman for the coalition, which has troops taking part in the offensive, did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but military sources later denied that the army had entered that the airport.
However, they told reporters that sporadic clashes were underway at the airport’s southern gate.
The highway between Hodeida and the government-held port of Mokha was also the scene of fighting, they said, adding that loyalist forces had suffered “losses.”
The UN and relief organizations have warned that any all-out assault on Hodeida would put hundreds of thousands of people at risk.
The fighting is already nearing densely populated residential areas, the Norwegian Refugee Council said, adding that aid distributions have been suspended in the west of the city.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that thousands are likely to flee if the fighting continued.
The WHO called on all sides “to protect health workers and their facilities from harm, as well as to ensure unimpeded access for medical teams seeking to treat the wounded.”
On Thursday, the UN Security Council demanded that Hodeida port be kept open to vital food shipments, but stopped short of backing a Swedish call for a pause in the offensive to allow for talks on a rebel withdrawal.
The Yemeni Civil War has claimed about 10,000 lives since the coalition intervened in 2015 when Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled into exile in Saudi Arabia when the rebels overran much of the country.
More than 22 million people are in need of aid, including 8.4 million who are at risk of starvation, according to the UN, which has described the conflict as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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