Saudi harsh inspection blocks Yemen humanitarian aid: UN

The United Nations says Saudi Arabia's harsh inspection process is obstructing the flow of humanitarian aid into war-wracked Yemen.

"The arms embargo and its inspection regime results in commercial goods, be it by air or by ship, no longer reaching the country,” said Johannes van der Klaauw, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, on Saturday.

The UN official stressed that the process “needs to be simplified, needs to be faster” or the humanitarian situation will further worsen in the war-ravaged country.

Klaauw warned that Riyadh’s stringent inspection of all relief consignments has greatly disrupted the lives of Yemeni civilians. The Saudi regime claims that the inspections are aimed at restricting the access of Yemen’s Ansarullah fighters of the Houthi movement to arms supplies.

Hospitals, and water and sanitation facilities would shut down if Yemen does not get an immediate fuel supply, Klaauw said.

The UN has voiced profound concern over the rising number of civilian casualties in the Saudi aerial attacks against the Yemeni people.

Saudi Arabia started its military aggression against Yemen on March 26 - without a UN mandate - in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement, which currently controls the capital, Sana’a, and other major provinces, and to restore power to fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh.

According to Yemen's Freedom House Foundation, the Saudi airstrikes have claimed the lives of 3,979 Yemeni people so far while more than 6,887 others have been wounded.

The Al Saud regime has imposed a blockade on the delivery of relief supplies to the war-stricken people of Yemen in defiance of calls by international aid groups.

Earlier in the month, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and medical charity group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), known in English as Doctors Without Borders, expressed “extreme” concern about the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen’s lifelines and its obstruction of aid deliveries to the impoverished nation.

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