Yemen blockade killing civilians: MSF
An international medical organization has voiced concern about the humanitarian situation in Yemen, saying the Saudi blockade of the impoverished state is killing as many civilians as the country’s Saudi-led crisis.
Joanne Liu, the president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, made the remarks in a telephone interview with AFP from Yemen's capital city of Sana’a on Thursday.
Liu said the Saudi-imposed restrictions on the delivery of aid to Yemen is "killing as (many people as) the current conflict,” stressing the need for “ways to get supplies to come in, in a safe way, and people can get their medicine and not die" of easily treatable diseases.
Last week, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also expressed concern over the plight of civilians in Yemen amid Saudi Arabia's deadly air raids against the war-wracked country.
On March 26, Saudi Arabia began its military aggression against Yemen – without a UN mandate – in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a close ally of Riyadh. The Al Saud regime also imposed an aerial and naval blockade on neighboring Yemen.
The country is also the scene of clashes between the Yemeni army and popular committees, loyal to Houthi fighters, on the one side and Saudi-backed militants on the other.
On Thursday, Saudi warplanes carried out fresh airstrikes on several regions in Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib. Saudi jets further conducted air raids on Yemen’s southwestern province of Lahij and the district of Harad in the country’s northwestern province of Hajjah. Razih District in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada also came under Saudi shelling fire.
Meanwhile, fighter from Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and allied army forces targeted Saudi military bases in southwestern border city of Najran in retaliation for the Riyadh regime’s ongoing military campaign. They also launched retaliatory rocket attacks on a Saudi military base in the southwestern city of Jizan.
Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said recently that 1,859 civilians were among the total of 3,984 people killed in Yemen until July 19. Local Yemeni sources, however, put the fatality figure at much higher.
Silent occupation: Israeli settlers flocking to Cyprus as wars on Gaza, Lebanon rage
Putin: BRICS, not the West, will drive global economic prosperity
MSF in Jordan holds health conference on Gaza
US surgeon haunted by Gaza children with ‘single gunshot wounds to head’
VIDEO | Fatal Harvest: Escalating attacks on Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank
Hamas rejects temporary truce offer, calls for complete ceasefire in Gaza
Iran among top nuclear technology countries: AEOI chief
Democrats 'risk losing' election for backing Israeli war on Gaza, Lebanon: US journalist
Protesters remove busts of Israel's first president from Manchester Univ.
VIDEO | Hezbollah drones
US involvement in Israel’s 'regional war' unconstitutional, lawmakers tell Biden
PressTV NEWSLETTER
now
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
