SANA’A (Dispatches) – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Sunday it has provided humanitarian aid to thousands of displaced Yemenis in the central Ma’rib province due to the Saudi-led war.
“In Ma’rib, displaced families continue to move from one camp to another seeking safety and humanitarian aid,” UNICEF said in a statement.
The UN agency said it supported around 7,600 people in one of the new camps for displaced Yemenis.
UNICEF is “providing 113,000 cubic meters of clean water on a daily basis,” it said, adding that it distributed 1,330 hygiene kits, installed 78 temporary latrines and 13 water distribution points for easy access water.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and other key Western powers, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s government back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
Having failed to reach its professed goals, the war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s continuous bombardment of the impoverished country, Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
Yemeni forces have advanced on the southern gates of the central Ma’rib city, pushing Saudi-backed militants loyal to former president Hadi further back.
Saudi forces and their mercenaries have failed to stop Yemeni soldiers and their allies from making rapid advances on the southern flank of the provincial capital city.
Hadi loyalists have already withdrawn from most of their positions in the eastern and central parts of the Balaqin subdistrict over the past two days, despite intense airstrikes carried by Saudi warplanes in their support.