NEW YORK (Dispatches) – The United Nations has lambasted Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against impoverished Yemen, sounding the alarm about the escalating catastrophic humanitarian situation in the war-torn Arab nation.
Stephen O'Brien, the outgoing UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, made the remarks during a briefing on the humanitarian situation in Yemen at the UN Security Council in New York, warning that the Yemeni people are suffering from a three-fold tragedy.
"Today, millions of people in Yemen are facing a triple tragedy: the specter of famine, the world's largest ever single-year cholera outbreak, and the daily deprivation and injustice of a brutal conflict that the world is allowing to drag on and on,” he said.
O'Brien also denounced Saudi Arabia’s aerial and naval blockade on Yemen and called for an immediate lifting of restrictions to allow much-needed humanitarian assistance to the country.
His comments came shortly after UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed called on the international community to seek a political solution to the almost two-and-a-half-year conflict in the crisis-hit country.
"Death looms for Yemenis by air, land and sea. Those who survived cholera will continue to suffer the consequences of the 'political cholera' that infects Yemen and continues to obstruct the road towards peace,” the UN envoy told the same Security Council session.
Cheikh Ahmed also said the Saudi war had left some 17 million Yemenis hungry, nearly seven million facing famine, and around 16 million almost without access to water or sanitation.
Meanwhile, thousands of Yemenis have taken to the streets of Sa'ada to protest escalation in the Saudi campaign against the impoverished Arab country.
The demonstrators were holding flags and banners reading, "Death to America and Death to Israel.”
The Saudi-led coalition is preparing to enter the port city of Hudaydah, which is now controlled by the Houthi Ansarullah movement. There is concern among Yemenis that the coalition may take over the western coast of Yemen.
Hudaydah is part of a broad battlefront where the Yemeni army and its Houthi allies are fighting Saudi-backed forces.
Since the beginning of the Saudi war on Yemen in March 2015, which was carried out in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi movement and reinstall the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, Saudi warplanes have pounded the nation day and night, killing over 12,000 people, including many women and children, and displacing over three million others.