ANSD : Thousands caught in Yemen flashpoint: U.N.

SAT 20 - 4 - 2024

Date: Mar 13, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

Thousands caught in Yemen flashpoint: U.N.

CAIRO/ADEN, Yemen: A U.N. humanitarian agency warned Tuesday that thousands of Yemeni civilians caught in fierce clashes between warring factions are trapped in an embattled northern district, an area that has become another flashpoint in the country’s bitter civil war. The number of displaced in the impoverished district of Hajjah has doubled over the past six months, with over 5,300 families fleeing from the district and its surrounding area in the past weeks, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Hajjah’s mountainous district of Kushar, only 50 kilometers from the border with Saudi Arabia has been hit particularly hard - roads and all communication lines are cut and “thousands of civilians are reportedly trapped between conflicting parties,” the United Nations said.

Over the past days, airstrikes by the Arab coalition, which is fighting on behalf of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, killed 22 people, including women and 14 children in the area.

“It is outrageous that innocent civilians continue to die needlessly in a conflict that should, and can be solved,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Lise Grande said.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels imposed tight control over Kushar after powerful local tribesmen took up arms against them. The Houthis subsequently shelled the district - home to 100,000 people - and killed and wounded scores of civilians. Thousands were displaced. As the Houthi siege strangled the area, the coalition airdropped food and medicine to the tribes.

The district’s tribes, in a 2012 deal with the Houthis, had remained neutral in Yemen’s civil war, which erupted in 2014, and were in return left in peace on their lands. The area’s Hajour tribes also belong to the same Zaydi sect as the Houthis.

But after the Houthis tried to use the district to send weapons and reinforcements to other front lines, where they have been fighting Saudi-backed forces, the deal collapsed.

The recent developments in Hajjah - where the total number of displaced due to the fighting numbers is around 30,000 underscore the fragmentation of the Houthis’ support base in northern Yemen, where the rebels have mostly been in control since the start of the conflict.

Yemen’s civil war has killed over 60,000 people - both civilians and combatants - and displaced 3 million, pushing the already impoverished nation to the brink of famine.

Separately, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council urged Yemen’s warring parties Tuesday to implement a peace deal in the port city of Hodeida, a move they hope will lead to an end of the four-year-old conflict.

The Chinese, French, Russian, British and U.S. ambassadors to Yemen said in a statement they were “extremely concerned” that the agreement reached in Stockholm in December had not been enforced.

The Houthis and the government agreed on a cease-fire and troop withdrawal in Hodeidah, an exchange of prisoners, and the reopening of humanitarian corridors to help millions of starving Yemenis, with international monitors to oversee things.

“We ... urge both parties to begin implementation of the proposal in good faith without further delay and without seeking to exploit the redeployments by the other side,” they said.

“We call on all sides to ensure the U.N. monitoring mission can carry out its work safely and without interference,” they added.

The Stockholm agreement stalled with each side worrying the other would take advantage of the withdrawal to gain ground.

The formation of a local authority to take control of Hodeida after the troop withdrawal, agreed in the truce deal, also remains a sticking point.

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