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WFP gains access to vital Yemen food aid
DUBAI, May 5, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The World Food Programme said it gained
access Sunday to vital food aid on the outskirts of Yemen’s flashpoint city
of Hodeida a month after postponing its mission for security reasons.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting on the side of the government accused the
Iran-aligned Huthi rebels of denying a group from the UN agency access to the
Red Sea mills warehouse in April.
The WFP had said the mission was postponed due to “security reasons”.
WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel said Sunday a WFP-led mission and a technical
team of the Red Sea mills company gained access to the food aid.
“The technical team will remain at the site to clean and service the
milling equipment in preparation for the milling and eventual distribution of
the wheat,” Verhoosel told AFP in an emailed statement.
Before the UN lost access in September the Red Sea mills held 51,000 tonnes
of grain, which was enough to feed more than 3.7 million people for a month.
In February, a WFP team visited the mills warehouse for the first time
since September, when they became inaccessible due to the conflict between
pro-government forces and the Huthi rebels.
The WFP said laboratory tests confirmed the wheat had been infested with
insects and had to be fumigated to feed million of people.
“An assessment carried out following the 26 February mission to the mills
concluded that around 70 percent of the wheat may still be salvageable,”
Verhoosel said.
“However, the flour yield will be lower than normal due to the hollow
grains (caused by weevil infestation) that will be sifted out during
milling.”
He added that the food will have most likely further deteriorated in
quality due to the hot weather.
This comes after an agreement was struck in Sweden in December, in which
Yemeni rivals agreed to redeploy their fighters outside the ports and away
from areas that are key to the humanitarian relief effort.
Fighting in Hodeida, whose port serves as the country’s lifeline, has
largely stopped since the ceasefire went into effect on December 18, but
there have been intermittent clashes.
Both the government and the Huthis have been accused of violating the truce
deal, while an agreed redeployment of forces has not yet been implemented.
The more than four-year conflict in Yemen has killed tens of thousands
people, many of them civilians, relief agencies say.
The fighting has triggered what the United Nations describes as the world’s
worst humanitarian crisis, with 3.3 million people still displaced and 24.1
million — more than two-thirds of the population — in need of aid.
BSS/AFP/RY/1620 hrs