FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Humanitarian Disaster Unfolding in Hodeidah, Yemen
June 23, 2018 (EIRNS)—The military situation around the Yemeni Red Sea port of Hodeidah remains unsettled and unresolved, but it’s clear that the Gulf-backed offensive is presenting a serious threat to the civilian population there. “We hear loud explosions all the time,” Assem Mohammed, a 30-year-old pharmacist, told Reuters by telephone. “We haven’t had water for three days.” The cutoff of water is a huge humanitarian concern. “We’re seeing high levels of malnutrition on the ground,” Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen told Reuters yesterday. “Of the main issues we are concerned about, none is more significant right now than the possibility of a cholera outbreak,” she said. “We could see hundreds of thousands of people affected.”
According to the Reuters report, the UN estimates that 50-60,000 people have been displaced, while the World Food Program said that the upsurge in fighting could result in up to 1.1 million people being either displaced or trapped within Hodeidah city and in need of emergency food assistance.
