DUBAI (Dispatches) – The UN World Food Programme has resumed the milling of grain for food aid to a starving population in Yemen after a halt in late December due to shelling damage, the agency says.
Artillery fire on Dec. 26 damaged WFP grain stores at the Red Sea Mills located on the front line in the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah.
Milling resumed on Dec. 30, the WFP said in a statement.
The mill and silos have become a focal point of the conflict in Hudaydah, where the United Nations is trying to enforce a ceasefire and troop withdrawal agreed a year ago at talks in Stockholm.  
The stores were off limits for around six months from late 2018 and at risk of rotting until the WFP negotiated access in February and began cleaning and milling what had been enough grain to feed 3.7 million people for a month.
So far just over 4,500 tonnes have been milled into flour and dispatched, the statement said.
The Saudi-led war has severely hit food supplies in Yemen and millions of people are at risk of starvation in what aid agencies describe as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah movement.
The U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the Saudi-imposed war has so far claimed more than 100,000 lives in Yemen.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on Yemen’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. According to the United Nations, more than 24 million people are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.