Smoke rises after an airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen December 15, 2017.

Smoke rises after an airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen December 15, 2017.
Photo Credit: Mohamed Al-Sayaghi

Yemen marks 1,000 days of war with no end in sight

As Yemen marked the grim 1,000-day milestone since the beginning of the war that has already killed more than 10,000 people and has brought millions to the brink of starvation, humanitarian aid groups lambasted the international community on Wednesday over its “shameful” inaction or inability to stop the conflict.

On March 26, 2015, a coalition of Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened to prevent the country’s takeover by the Iran-backed Houthi movement and prop up the internationally recognized President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Since then, the situation in Yemen, already the poorest country in the Middle East, has deteriorated into a living nightmare, said Tamer Kirolos, Yemen country director for Save the Children humanitarian group.

“In that time, the devastation of Yemen has been unimaginably absolute,” Kirolos said in a statement. “The conduct of all warring parties, without exception, has been deplorable. We have seen civilians killed, schools and hospitals bombed, and humanitarian access severely restricted. All of this has seemingly intentionally created conditions in which children are starving and are not able to get suitable medical attention.”

One-year-old Sameer al-Dhanbari, who suffers from severe malnutrition, lies on a bed at a hospital in Houta city, in the southern province of Lahej, Yemen December 5, 2017.
One-year-old Sameer al-Dhanbari, who suffers from severe malnutrition, lies on a bed at a hospital in Houta city, in the southern province of Lahej, Yemen December 5, 2017. © Fawaz Salman

About 4.5 million children and pregnant or lactating women are now acutely malnourished, Kirolos said.

Save the Children expects 50,000 children to die this year alone, he said.

“And if this war continues there will be countless more lives lost needlessly across Yemen,” Kirolos said.

To find out what it is like for humanitarian workers on the ground in Yemen, Radio Canada International spoke with Jamie Graves, a Canadian who works for Save the Children in southern city of Aden. We apologize for the quality of the audio:

Yemen is being pushed ever closer to famine by a crippling blockade of the country’s key northern ports by the Saudi-led coalition, Oxfam warned.

No fuel, essential for moving food and other vital goods around the country, has been allowed into the main ports that serve about two thirds of Yemen’s population since early November.

“For 1,000 days, huge amounts of sophisticated modern weapons have pounded Yemen, and on top of that we are now witnessing a medieval siege where mass starvation is being used as a weapon of war,” said in a statement Mark Goldring, Oxfam Great Britain’s Chief Executive.

“Cutting off vital food, fuel and medicine to a population is never justified and should never be tolerated. It is a tactic that is devoid of any sense of decency, any sense of morality and any sense of humanity.”

Since the eruption of violence in Yemen in March 2015 and as of mid-December, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented total of 5558 civilians killed and 9,065 injured.

Three million people were forced to flee their homes and nearly one million people are suspected of contracting cholera in the world’s worst outbreak ever recorded, according to the World Health Organization.

“We know what needs to happen,” Kirolos said. “We need an immediate end to any restrictions that are stopping humanitarian aid and commercial supplies of fuel, food and medicine from getting in and we also urgently need a credible ceasefire and a negotiated peace deal. The UN Security Council must put its full effort into making this happen now.”

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